back to my old routine, and exhausted, though my schedule is lighter in the spring than in the fall. exhausted in an emotionally-drained kind of way, since what i did was basically sit a couple of weeks by my mom's side, with my mom barely knowing who i was. now it's good to get back to work, but at the same time i have virtually no energy or patience for the usual academic kinds of things.

a kid died on the icy roads of iowa, and as it turned out, he was a texan, he'd worked at the student center here and was taking a semester off to work on the carson campaign. i don't believe he was driving at the time, but i can tell you, iowa roads can be pretty icy this time of year, it doesn't take much. i had an unusual amount of sympathy for the kid, especially when i found out he was one of ours. i spent a fall canvassing in maine, and, while they had no ice or snow, i could see it coming, and got a good sense of what the place was like. iowa is its own world this time of year, this month, this week, which rolls around once every four years. so the question is, is this guy a kind of special character, to go up there, drive around on a futile campaign, and lose his life among so many others who are filling the place at this moment? the campaigns will leave the place empty in about a week. he however will hold still in time.

my path takes me past pecans, and i've taken to stooping over and grabbing them again. a few, a pound at a time, and i'll take them in sometime in february and get lots of pecans in the deal. welcome back to texas!

but alas the best welcome was my band; i'd missed three or four tuesdays, but they were all there, same as usual, wondering about me, and i was very glad to see them. the finest people in the world, i thought, as we ran through the usual songs. some kids in the audience got a kick out of it, i could tell. it was like, they happened into the coffee shop, sat down, and this wild bluegrass was going on. it was an event, it was a happening. our usual audience, two old couples and the wife of the guitar player, were there as well. the workers stop in occasionally and love it. i was feeling a little rusty and said so; it was over a month since i'd played. they shrugged it off, though i'm sure they noticed. they're musicians. they live for the variations, the runs, the extra stuff in there. they tolerated the squeaks, the times i got off the melody.

my exhaustion is overtaking me. i'll get back on the creative treadmill sooner or later. tonight, i'm going to bed.