My Mac died last week. It would not boot up. I’m not sure what happened, but I’ll nonetheless blame it on a PC virus.

I am drafting this entry at a winery in the Blue Ridge Mountains. AMKT and I left Guilford County together without the children for the first time in months. I am upstairs reading The Hobbit while our group is tasting wine downstairs. Alcohol makes me depressed and anxious; reading and writing makes me intoxicated and lively.

The semester has gone well so far, although I have not worked on my manuscripts in a while. I put them away for a few weeks to prepare form my alumni talk, but the talk was postponed until March. Then I composed my 2014 self-evaluation instead of researching religion and mass media.

I’m still working my way through The Hobbit. Right now, Bilbo and the dwarves just escaped the Elvish Kingdom and are in the Lake City. They complain. A lot.