Penny Whistles Out of Key

I finished this morning's NY Times crossword in 4 1/2 minutes. Pretty good for a Wednesday. Some day I'll break the mid-week 4 minute barrier.

It's not that I'm showing off. It's just that I haven't posted anything for 5 days and I don't want people getting the idea I have nothing to say.

Things are so quiet at this moment, in my new office. My closest and second closest office neighbors don't get here until 9:30 and 11:00, respectively. I have no music playing now. I'm still playing this song in my head. I've been listening to that song since that memorable fall day in 1990 when I worked that awful temp job in northeast Minneapolis and I couldn't wait to get in my car and drive home, listening to my cassettes. I always thought it was a good song. Now I realize it's brilliant; it's words tell me everything I need to know.

Another day, another "fall" banquet. We celebrate the beginning of a new academic year with platitudes and coffee urns and disposable cutlery in a cardinal red-festooned ballroom. I love this job.

There's a dead ant on the bottom of my palm. How did it get there? I didn't kill it.

I've had strange dreams. In one of them, I was on the precipice, at a great height. I was about to fall down. In another, I was on another precipice, about to fall. In neither dream did I actually fall.