another saturday night, a very cold one, with a few inches of snow out there, but nothing like buffalo where it's what, six feet? or seven?

my family will undoubtedly talk about buffalo tomorrow in our zoom, because we all lived there, it's something we have in common. my older brother really only visited, and i was there only two years, but the younger two were there seven and eleven years, enough to get a sense of the place. while i was there they had a nine-footer - historic even then. this one may be nine or more before it's over.

there was a lot of lore and culture related to the massive snows they had there - most people had at least one good story. what was remarkable really was that they were used to it. the snowplow guys would get out there and tear around, and the streets would be plenty icy, and there were lots of accidents and people died from trying to shovel it. but all that was pretty much the usual - what they did under these extreme circumstances. these days, just reading about it makes me cold, and makes me not want to go outside.

as a page-read addict, i sit glued to my kindle counter (see yeah write) and tonight i'm wondering if it will inch over a hundred. those fellow authors out there know that a hundred is pretty puny and won't amount to much in terms of real money. but it's not a matter of money. it's a matter of pure addiction, watching to see if your ship comes in. it's a little arbitrary, and totally out of my control. tonight some pages came in but they were totally not the ones i expected to come in; they were for a different book. ok but i'll take what i can get. the two i was watching for might show up tonight, and be there in the morning, or might not come for a while. the question really is to what degree the addiction is hindering my daily functioning - i'm not writing anything because i'm so bound up in reading to get page-reads, that i'm slogging through stuff i don't even follow, sometimes, just to get page-reads. it should all come out in the wash, so to speak, as some of what i read is really good, and generally, it corresponds - i read a hundred, somebody out there reads at least a hundred. on an abstract level i'm doing ok - well more than a hundred a day. on a financial level, still quite poor - actual sales would be better than this piddling income. mentally, i've become a wreck. like page-reads is all there is.

kids have retreated. they're all into their own addictions. i like the food smells of the season: being indoors, having my wife start already on thanksgiving preparation; expecting many people here for the big day. the house is warm; i like walking the dogs in the cold, then coming home, sitting in my warm chair, staying out of the worst of the weather. it'll be a big traveling holiday and i'll be going to st. louis on mon. to pick up one son. hopefully it will warm up. i can only think of buffalo, and of being out there, when the drifts are going over your head.