When the holes in your life coincide

it can make for a sad and frustrating time.

Today's word

inspissate \in-SPISS-ayt\ - to make or become thick or thicker

Oh, yesterday's word was servile, which I didn't bother looking up as it has been in my vocabulary for so long.  But apparently not in my spoken vocabulary - as I just noticed in retrieving the more permanent url for inspissate - or someone surely would have corrected my pronunciation by now.

The way it feels

I've been starting to prepare Time in a Bottle for this wedding I'm playing for in October, and am playing it better than I ever did before. I always played it more like an acoustic lead guitarist would, even though I never had a band behind me to fill it in.  Now I've incorporated a lot of the same riffs within the context of their chords, which makes for a fuller and more fluid piece. I'm enjoying playing it in this new way, and think those who hear it will like it more this way.  It's funny, because I was always proud of how I played it before, not even realizing that there was another approach that would be better suited to the opportunities I typically have to play.

But that isn't why I started this post.  In the last couple of days I've also found myself thinking of the other Jim Croce hit that has been in my repertoire, even though I haven't played it for years.

She's livin' in L.A. with my best ol' ex-friend Ray -
a guy she said she knew well and sometimes hated.

Well, isn't that the way they say it goes . . .
But let's forget all that, and give me the number, if you can find it,
so I can call just to tell her I'm fine and to show
I've overcome the blow,
I've learned to take it well . . .
I only wish my words could just convince myself that it just wasn't real . . . But that's not the way it feels. 

I don't know why these lyrics seem to be resonating with me so oddly right now.  I suppose it might be nothing more than nostalgia.

Brick wallz

The programming code I carefully developed over months appears to be gone.
The thousands of items that I downloaded for transfer to the new knowledge base don't appear to be pointed to correctly in the spreadsheet that I need to verify them against.
The documents I'm supposed to get out this week all need further editing and the subject matter experts who can approve my revisions are all off for the rest of the week.
Basically, everything looks like it is going to come crashing down at once at work.

Idiot box

Tonight's plan to take Potter to visit his nephew Cain as a precursor to hanging out there for a few days while we go out of town next weekend means that, for at least an hour tonight, I won't feel like a voluntary refugee from my own family room.  But come to think of it, I will still be, in a way.

Today's word

granita noun \gruh-NEE-tuh\ - a coarse-textured ice confection typically made from fruit

How you get caught matters

I'm convinced that the single most important thing you can do to reduce your punishment risk if you have committed a crime is to report it yourself.  Unfortunately, in this day and age you have to be careful how you do that, and that means getting a good lawyer who will support your attempts to come clean and who has good working relationships with the prosecutors.

Once your crime is discovered and reported by someone else, no amount of responsible action you take will ever convince prosecutors that you're doing anything more than trying to make a good impression.  And once a crime is reported, prosecutors are often chiefly concerned with getting the maximum possible conviction.