I've done a lot of alternation between sleeping and not sleeping today, getting better slowly despite the odds. I've also hit the major cabin fever state, leading me to take an ill-advised but psychically very good ride in the evening, just here to Fryeburg and back. I deposited my check on the way.

On the way back, I stopped and filled up at an Irving Mainway. About five years ago, Irving Oil was the source of all things evil in Maine -- they're Canadian, you see. Among border towns, Canada is a gigantic, evil country that comes down here, takes our jobs and our wood (Canadian companies being the largest loggers currently in Maine) and now our gasoline market.

Mainways do this by evilly being bright, clean places to shop with good selections, long hours and odd specials. I received a free banana for fueling up there, for example.

The Hell?

I can see a free glass for eight fillups or a toy truck for filling up and paying five extra dollars sometime around Christmas. But produce?

I guess there are just things in this world that I don't need to understand. Things that may confuse us, but still are, try as we might to deny them.

Which sort of explains the candidacy of George W. Bush for the Presidency.

No one, as near as I can tell, actually wants George W. Bush to be President except for close family friends of his (one of whom is a student of mine). But, through the peculiar magic known as the "lesser of two evils," there's an excellent chance he'll succeed and become President. George W. Bush.

I could put "Al Gore" up in that paragraph and it would read the same way, save that the Vice President doesn't have any personal friends who are students of mine. The republic is inches from falling, I swear.

And I'm rambling. Something more interesting tomorrow, I hope.