The
blog rested this past summer and through the warm fall, dozing gently
in the rocking chair on the resort’s veranda, cooled by soft zephyrs off
the lake, sipping healthful drafts offered by the aged but solicitous
staff, and lazily paging through the cheap paperbacks recommended by the
second under-gardener’s helper.

The blog is not, after all, as young as
it used to be. That lap rug felt good as real autumn came on, for
example, and staff wheels it (the blog, not the rug) quickly inside
whenever, say, a historic storm hits, or a little early snow falls.
Now, as the evenings pull in and Standard Time throws its cloak of blackness
over supper and a snort, the blog returns to its squalid, ill-lit
cubicle. It is coming to grips with the fact that it can no longer bring its A game, but, canny veteran, plans to play to its strengths:

1. Plans for more good walks (fading but hopeful), 
2. Superficial comments on complicated issues of health, relationships, politics, culture, and UConn Women’s Basketball. (Not a word on the Red Sox, per solicitous staff’s orders.) 
3. Bitching and moaning, cleverly concealed as mordant humor, 
4. Idiot on a bicycle, 
5. (If fortunate) Spectacle on skis, and
6. Sweet B. 

Insiders familiar with the blog’s thinking believe it is likely to concentrate
on No. 6, but we’ll just have to wait and see. With bated breath. Or
baited, if you’re chewing on a worm.