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Storm was something of a bust. Yes, there was snow. No, there wasn't half a foot of it. Poughkeepsie Celebration of Lights and fireworks display hastily postponed to today. There's also a scavenger hunt in Old Poughkeepsie. (Of course, much of the central core of Poughkeepsie is what you might call "Old Poughkeepsie." Much of it is also what you might call "Deep Urban Ghetto and Squalor Poughkeepsie." The scavenger hunt will take place in the tamer areas.) I do love scavenger hunts, so shortly I will be trotting down to Cafe Aurora and signing up.

Bardavon showed the 1951 Christmas Carol starring Alastair Sims last night. I went. Have seen the movie a million times – and as corny as it is, it never fails to spook me out – but never on a big screen with the mighty Wurlitzer before.

I continue to be in an odd mood. Reading Alice Munro, which is part of it. When you read Alice Munro, you naturally start thinking of yourself as a character in an Alice Munro short story, which is to say, as someone whose life can be encapsulated in 35 pages of beautiful prose. You may rage against this. You may think, Damn! It really should have been PHILIP ROTH who won the Nobel Prize, because he would have devoted a whole damn novel to me! But it is what it is.

But the odd mood...

Like I flew into an absolute fury last night texting with PT because he started asking me about buying a car, andI told him I thought I'd have the $$$ saved by February. I don't envy you YOUR task! he texts and then starts going on and on about how virtually impossible it is to buy a used car, and how I'm never going to be able to find one: Victimization at the hands of unscrupulous individuals is my inevitable fate.

And I'm thinking, Damn! I'm not marrying the thing. I know perfectly well in my price range, there are going to be some mechanical issues with anything I buy and I'm gonna have to sink $2,500 a year into keeping a car roadworthy for the two or three years I own it. It's not like I'm looking for a Cadillac to be buried in.

And then I thought, You have some gall talking down to me when your life is falling to pieces.

Which it is.

PT was the one guy at the VISTA orientation who was in my age bracket. We hung out a few times. He chose VISTA not because any of the job descriptions appealed to him, but because his life was falling apart. Without VISTA, it seems to me his life is really in pieces and he's moving back to Ithaca – Ithaca! -- which is not where his life began to disintegrate, but is where the downward spiral really accelerated through an X-girlfriend and a restraining order.

I couldn't tell if I was over-reacting or if he really was being obnoxious.

Also, B sent me another laptop – a really beautiful machine, perfect for writing in coffee shops.

("Really" appears to be adjective of the day! Must watch those jejune qualifiers.)