Not quite mint juleps on the veranda

That I very nearly called this post “Southern comfort” reveals me as a long-time yankee from the urban northeast.  No, I suppose Arlington, Virginia isn’t quite the south – certainly not culturally – but you can see why I’d say so if you consider that I once thought any place south of 195 may as well have been Deliverance country.  Ah, the old provincialisms.  And to further deconstruct this ridiculous metaphor, my entire apartment is probably smaller than a veranda.

But, boy howdy, did I have a relaxing and refreshing day: sitting on the couch with the windows open, reviewing a chapter of a friend’s upcoming book, while the wind rustled the blooming saucer magnolia right outside the windows.  It was a beautiful, sunny day, and the pair of mourning doves that have taken up residence on the neighbor’s window sill were soaking up the rays, singing their “woo-woo-oo-oo-oo” song on occasion.

Almost any sort of writing is a real chore for me and yet every now and then I commit to writing or editing something or other.  I enjoy it but it does take the sort of concentration that I’ve found so difficult of late.   I do not regret agreeing to review the chapter in question (on DRM technologies, for the curious), and I feel somewhat validated in my decision after the elements all aligned today and made for a very pleasant time.  (I did not get as much done as I would have liked, but what else is new?  Time management remains a challenging task, especially when the television and the internets are so near. )

I’m beginning to ramble and I don’t really have a point.  It was a good day – an entire good weekend in fact – and I felt it worth committing to bits.

… Hey, are those banjos I hear?