It is no-ship day at the My-Lynx Associates headquarters. We get the orders, but there is no one to ship them. The Post Office is closed, the store chariot remains in its designated space. We glanced upwards at the gathering gloom in the sky, and felt a little joy. It was a long, dry summer, and though the drought has abated somewhat, things are still very dry. So when we hear the plink-plink-plink of rain on the chimney and the iron pipes on the roof, we look out, open the door and sniff the moist air outside.

We flipped through the channels now and again, not watching anything completely, just seeing what was on. Sunday is that special day when action movies abound. People don't just have conversations with each other on television, or in this case, the recycled action movie. They take out some kind of firearm, and wave it around for punctuation. Where I would use a exclamation mark for emphasis, a character on television would pull out a sidearm, or grab someone's shirt collar, or some other kind of unpleasantness. And they yell a lot. Conversation does not take place in hushed tones.

The other main occupation on television, or more accurately "diversion" is to see someone with six-pack abs with some kind of exercise equipment. The latest exercise devices to attract our attention are those electric belts that send a charge through the mid-section and cause some kind of muscle contraction. They used to sell those things in the back of comic-books, but they are back with a vengeance. And to the best of our knowledge, they may cause some momentary sensation of having done something useful, but they did not work decades ago, except now they appear more technological and futuristic.

We know about a couple of the reality shows, but there are so many, we have no idea what is going on. Somebody sitting behind a table. Some other people standing opposite, a group facing some kind of elimination, or reprimand or summary judgment. Sometimes they are dressed in chef's uniforms, which means that they rush around at some point with sharp objects and try and make some kind of dish that will be acceptable to the people sitting at the table.

If worst comes to worst, we can sit still for a few minutes of everyone's favorite Porifera, who doubles as a rectangular yellow dishwashing utensil. He interacts mostly with his two invertebrate neighbors and a boss who inexplicably runs a business that serves up cannibalistic portions of his fellow crustaceans in patty form with cheese and pickles on a sesame-seed bun. We have to admire the business acumen of its creators, who have harvested multiple hundreds of millions of dollars from an admiring populace by their ability to entertain young and old with endless plot variations.

So after a couple of go-rounds with the clicker / remote, we move back to the world of books. or we flip on the computer and double check the news. Or we listen to podcasts of radio shows.  And we work on the blog.