After spending the day yesterday fighting electronics with no positive results, today I let electronics do all the work, as I sat in the recliner in front of the TV most of the day. I let the Daytona 500 and a couple of old movies keep me from thinking about anything else I might be doing (or should be doing).

It was definitely much more pleasant inside with the TV on that it would have been outside, with the rain pelting down all day. In fact, I think that’s why I kept it on instead of turning it off and reading, as I’d planned. The TV set lights up the room on a dreary day, and the action livens up a quiet house. I think I needed it to take my mind off the miserable weather.

Days like this seem to end earlier than they should. I don’t know if it’s more the inactivity or the daylong darkness, but by six o’clock tonight it already felt like nine, and by nine it felt like midnight. That doesn’t mean it made it any easier for me to go to bed and to sleep, of course. But I’ve always felt that a day of inactivity is more wearying than a day filled with action. That was certainly true in my years in retail, when the busier the store was, the better I felt at the end of the day.