The touch-up on the crew cut was a mistake. I should have let the hair grow out. The temperature dropped to below freezing Friday night, so I spent the opening days of lip-balm and hand-lotion season suffering the cold while my body heat escaped through my uninsulated scalp.

All my shivering might burn some calories and that might help shape me up for the upcoming Thanksgiving through New Years engorgement period, or I might get rich quick with a book about the role of short hair in weight loss, but typing a manuscript while wearing mittens is tough, and at the end of the day, when all is said and done, all things considered, other things being equal, I'd just as soon stay warm. That's the bottom line. I was tempted to wear a watch cap around the house. Okay, I did wear a watch cap around the house. I was stalling there with the string of clich�s. And I was kidding about the mittens. I wore gloves.

I can think of two items that I want to record quickly before I go on to discover whether there might be a point to this entry while insisting all the way that there need not be one.

I might not have mentioned previously that Owen had two hundred candy bars to sell at a dollar a hit, a fund-raising activity for his swim team. He has had these candies in his room for the last two weeks, and until Saturday he had made little progress in selling them, aside from his sales to himself and to his younger brother Taylor, which amounted to about ten dollars.

He could count on about twenty dollars from each of two local grandparents, and maybe another forty from a desultory pass through the neighborhood, but that would still leave the parental ATMs on the hook for about a hundred dollars. Then, on Saturday, with little nudging from his parents (but with the Tuesday deadline looming), he and a buddy canvassed the neighborhood, arriving home after three hours with nothing to show for their time but chapped lips and a bundle of cash, bringing great joy to my checkbook. Not so much as a Reese's piece remained.

The other item I want to insinuate into this ramble is a follow-up on the issue of halftime politicizing-disguised-as-alum-interest that I mentioned a few weeks ago in the September 26th entry. I listened carefully during the halftime broadcast Saturday to see whether there might be a recurrence of the behavior that I had found so objectionable in a previous broadcast, but there was not. Roar, Mouse! Bust their chops!

Well, actually, they've probably just moved on, but a mouse can dream.

Okay, okay, here is the point of this otherwise pointless entry. Think of everything else you've read here today as occurring during a conversation in which I scratch my toe in the dust while trying to muster the courage to say what I really have on my mind.

This summer, a writer whose journal and whose writing I admire very much included this quotation on an entry:

There is no better indication of a man's character than the company which he keeps.

Although a person might choose to disregard everything else Machiavelli ever wrote, most folks would do well to remember that simple maxim.

But I feel myself starting to scuff my toe in the dust again.

I have kept these pages offline longer than I have kept them online, and I would continue to write them without readers, but my experience after having put them online, and after having found a small group of readers, has been uniformly good, thanks, I believe, to the company I've found myself in.

So, thanks. Just thanks. You know who you are.

Reading:
Finished Gustaf Sobin's The Fly-truffler. It's as good as I first thought it was. It's quiet in the way that the novels The English Patient and A River Runs Throught It were quiet. No fishing, but plenty of chances to film backlit French landscapes and interiors, both rustic and mental.

Weathering:
Cold. Sheet of ice on the birdbath in the morning. That cold.

Watching:
Sunday night Ed. Thought I'd give it a look. I might give it another, but I won't rename the kids yet.

Listening:
I'm told I don't.

Saturday, I listened to the KSU-KU football game (52-13).