Oh, look. Snow.

I haven't posted much because my life has settled into a pretty consistent cycle, and it's just not very exciting. Work, make dinner, write, glass of wine, bed. Chicago is getting a couple inches of snow every two to three days, and has been for a couple weeks now. So that adds pushing the shovel around the driveway, either by getting up an hour early or doing it when I get home. It also makes driving to and from work slow, because the municipalities have run out of salt. It's so damn cold that even an inch of snow accumulates on the roads, and without salt the roads get kind of bad and stay that way. It's not terrible, it just means a slow drive to and from work. And whenever you walk outside, you have to do that loose-kneed hobble or you fall. I know this because I fell in the parking lot at work last week, and my wrist still hurts.

Work itself has been slow. Cycles, again. Not having a lot to do doesn't mean my coworkers are getting their work done, it just means everyone has more time to spend at espn.com. Priorities, people. But it does mean that I can write at work, which is more difficult that you'd think. This building is almost designed to channel away creative thought.

I've mentioned my displeasure in working for a junk mail provider. One of the things we do is mortgage advertising, which has always been especially distasteful. We recently did a mailing to mortgage brokers, advertising our services, and now we have an employing calling all the people to whom we mailed. Cold calling, basically. It's horrible to listen to, the simpering wilt of her voice, the goddamn trick questions you have to ask to keep them from hanging up on you. I hate sales. I hate salespeople. I hate having to listen to this woman whine her way into voicemail.