The youngest household cat likes to lay in front of the register in our kitchen because of the warm air frequently pumped out during the cold weather we are experiencing. Cats are masters of comfort. It reminds of other times, such as when I was a kid woken up very early in the morning to do paper routes. There was a register in our living room where I’d sit hidden behind the full length curtains and hunched over it for warmth, drowsy with sleep in the dark winter mornings, until it was time to go to school.

As I sit on the couch this very cold and somewhat gloomy morning, sipping my second cup of coffee and eating some British digestive biscuits, I’m thinking through the amount of effort I recently spent to remediate lecture slides for accessibility. I’ve spent untold hours on this effort, but it is all worth it because accessibility for everyone is worth it.

Overnight, we had a small amount of new snowfall. As always, I am glad to see it, and also glad that I don’t have to drive in it today. This is the bleak midwinter time that the old carol talks about. That first paragraph was written a few days ago, and today, as I find time to complete this post, we woke up to bitter cold.

Recently, I attended a funeral (really, more exactly, a celebration of life) of a former colleague whom I very much liked and respected. Although a sad occasion in many ways, not least because this person was younger than me and died rather suddenly and cruelly of metastatic cancer, the event I attended was actually quite uplifting. It was very much according to their wishes and deeply reflected their own personality, and that is the main reason why.

In an increasingly maddened world made far worse by the awful president and party currently in control of the levers of power, it is more and more difficult to find peace and calm. The awful people currently in positions of authority want us to feel weak, powerless, and afraid. That works to their advantage. Personal circumstances are also frequently strained and tenuous.

There's a song sung by Patty Loveless that I've always found sad but truthful. Called "How Can I Help You Say Goodbye," the following lyric particularly resonates: Life's about change andNothin' ever stays the same This song comes to mind today as our oldest child turns a year older and our youngest one goes back to college for their final semester.

Yesterday was a very quiet and restful day, thankfully. I woke up with a pretty severe headache that gradually improved through the day. In the evening, we had lots of what my wife describes as “finger food” in celebration of the coming New Year. I watched The Return of the Jedi with my youngest. Almost everyone else stayed in their rooms doing their own thing.

There is no more heavily used appliance in our kitchen than the coffee maker. We easily go through four or five pots of coffee in a day, sometimes more, and the coffee is made morning, noon, and night. This is especially noticeable during the holidays with a full house. We also go through groceries at an unbelievable rate, necessitating frequent trips to stores to buy yet more food.

There is a strong tendency in me toward mourning and melancholy. As far as I can remember, this has been true throughout my life. I look back at what’s past and grieve that it’s in the past, and I do this quite a bit. Take my kids, for example. I often think on their younger days and wish they weren’t over for good.

Generally, we have all managed to get along and be okay in one another's company so far during the holiday time. For me, it has been an introspective break, full of thoughts about what ifs and things that were and things that will be. Honestly, it has been a time of intense emotions and lots of fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD).

I don’t know about you, but I am increasingly thinking about returning to as many analog or physical things as I can, such as movies on DVD or Blu-ray instead of streaming, or print books instead of e-books. For me, it will never entirely be one or the other, but the balance these days is tipping in favor of physical rather than digital for several reasons.

Tis the season … for stressful, end-of-semester grading. This is the teacher’s lament. I am way behind in grading papers and presentations for the graduate course I taught this fall. I’m a little paralyzed by the guilt of that fact. And then, there’s next semester’s class approaching at a frightening speed, one that I need a lot of time to prepare for.

Our youngest arrived back home a few days ago from college, so we have a full house for the next while. Another of our children has a birthday coming up as well, and of course we are busy thinking about and preparing for Christmas as well as New Year’s celebrations. I keep thinking of that verse from Silent Night, for some reason: “All is calm, all is bright.”

The Bible talks a lot about fear and being afraid. I read somewhere that that specific phrase — “Don’t be afraid” — appears about 70 times in scripture. That’s a lot. I know there are many other variations of those words or that sentiment as well. We tend to be afraid of many things, yet God clearly wants us to be at peace.

The Christmas cactus decided to bloom for Thanksgiving. Like many things in life, its timing was off, but that's ok. I still enjoyed its beautiful flowers. One of the orchids in my office window is still blooming vigorously, and the one that's a miniature orchid that always seems reluctant to bloom at all now has a flowering shoot, I noticed recently, so there'll be blooms on it someday soon, as well.

You know how it happens that when someone near you yawns, you have the urge to yawn, too? That is what it's like living with someone who struggles with major anxiety. That's especially true when multiple people around you struggle with it. It's contagious, and you start to feel your own level of anxiety. Ways that this extreme anxiety manifests itself are not the same for each person.

The big dog successfully underwent major surgery yesterday and is now back at home. The fun part begins, which involves making every effort to keep him from re-injuring his leg for the next three months. This is written sarcastically because there's nothing fun about trying to prevent a very rambunctious, 130+ pound dog from bouncing around and doing damage. It looks like starting late tomorrow night, we will have a significant snow storm.

Our beloved and rambunctious (and extra, extra large) flat-coated retriever managed to tear the ACL on one of his legs recently. Poor thing has been limping around for a bit, causing us a lot of concern. He'll have reparative surgery in a few days, which should fix things up, but the recovery process will take about three months and cost an arm and a leg.

Lots of things are happening; some good, some bad. On the bad side, we’re struggling with a tsunami of mental health issues in our family. We’re also faced with many large and unexpected expenses, such as major car repairs and veterinary bills. On the good side, well, let’s see…I’m trying my best to form a consistent walking habit every day.

Earlier this week, I achieved what is for me a momentous, long-term goal. I successfully (knock on wood) finished weaning myself off of a longtime medication, one that I think I’ve been taking for about thirty years. Nobody else really cares, but I do. Goal achieved. I don’t know about you, but I may set a goal and never achieve it.

As I sit on the couch looking out into the early morning darkness, I’m watching snow falling steadily, and everything is going white. That makes me happy. The more snow that falls, generally, the happier I am. I know. People think I’m weird, for this as well as for other reasons. I suppose snow reminds me of my childhood. There were several winters back then where we had so much snowfall that when they were plowed, streets in the small town where I grew up looked like the parting of the Red Sea in Genesis.

We all encounter bosses who have obviously failed up, and they are relatively easy to spot. I've encountered many examples of this in my own career. The following list might be helpful to share, just in case you aren't sure of your own diagnosis. You might have a jackass for a boss when they: Routinely lowball the starting salary for hiring new people out of a misguided sense that that means they are being effective and smart.

One of the things I’m heartily sick of is trying to find people to fill positions at my library who are willing to work for low pay in imperfect conditions for the “privilege” of working at a faith-based institution. As I’ve told others, what this really means is that for every position we try to fill, we are looking for unicorns.

We made an unprecedented second trip in a month to the Art Institute of Chicago. It seemed a good idea given that it was a somewhat dreary, rainy fall day. This time, although we had hoped to view the Arts of the Americas area, it turned out to be closed, so we focused primarily on the Modern Wing and saw lots of different (and frequently somewhat odd, if I'm honest) modern artworks.

The work situation keeps getting worse for various reasons. So then, I often feel a bit of despair. As mentioned before, in spite of or perhaps more accurately, because of the fact that I work in a faith-based institution, my time there has robbed me of any sense of well-being, confidence, satisfaction, or purpose. It is such a warped place.