Lazy Sunday

 Interesting day today... first, snow.  Now.  I mean, remember those T-shirts that show weather in NE Ohio, with 70 and two days later freezing... I felt like that today, with a smidgen of accumulation on the grass and the driving sleet that came down during the day.  Oi.  At least the latter stopped, eventually, but it was still nice and cold throughout the day.  

Then, oddly, during Mass today I had a hell of a time paying attention; my mind was racing on all sorts of different things.  I did graciously volunteer to help with the Festival leftover sales today, which was fine, but I really don't know why I was so mentally preoccupied before... then it was off to the gym to lift, Best Buy for the new DVD player, and then home to do some much needed (and put off) dusting and straightening up.  It does look cleaner in here -- floor is nice, dust gone, and I even sprayed some air freshener...  to be sure, I prefer the spring cleaning concept, as you can let in the fresh air, but... one does as one can.

I started a new book over the weekend -- Jaffa's Crisis of the House Divided, which is a political look at the 1850s.  It was (at the time) a revisionist history -- one that looked at the role Stephen A. Douglas played in the decade, but not exactly assigning him blame; rather, a more nuanced look, pointing out that much of what he was trying to achieve was a way to defuse the slavery crisis.  It's quite dense, to say nothing of lengthy, but I am enjoying it immensely.  Lots of looks at the speeches of the era, parsing of arguments, comparisons to Clay and Webster -- all good stuff.  There is, of course, a second volume -- that looks at the decade after the Lincoln-Douglas debates -- so I added that.  I should have read this before, but...better late than never, as always.