Blegh.

Okay, I'll level with you.

It's been a really rough week. Very tough school week (fun and challenging, yes, but tough) with massively overcrowded classes, as well an ugly book-production job that involved horrific amounts of overtime... and the column I've been wrestling with for the last couple of days just blew up.

On top of everything else, as is traditional during the fall for many of us who labor in the public school system, I have managed to catch some sort of hideous virus, and I'm afraid my bride has managed to catch it as well. I love my students, but they are little plague ships, the lot of them. Somehow I always forget this and neglect to get a flu shot in September. Every October as I am coughing and blowing my nose, I mutter, "Shoulda made time for the flu shot," and then over the intervening months, I forget this resolution. Every goddamn year. For going on sixteen years. You'd think I'd learn.

Not to go on and on like Eeyore, but...

...sometimes, all you have left is, "Blegh."

The point is, I know when I'm licked. I am admitting defeat.

If it's good enough for Batman, it's good enough for me. I'll take another swing at the real column next week, but in the meantime Julie and I are going to settle in with some chicken soup and a DVD that arrived recently, featuring the Middleman's favorite movie star.

I can tell you that Colt .45 is a fine old traditional Western and Randolph Scott is terrific in it. But you don't have to take my word for it... someone's put the whole thing up on YouTube in eight parts,

here. Check it out. That way I won't feel guilty about skipping this week and going back to bed.

See you next week.