that old late-night magic....

It's late. Kind of late in the Central time zone and somewhat ridiculous on the East Coast.

Did you know that Oprah is on at this hour? The show features a perfect topic for insomniacs: the power of positive thinking via the sensational bestseller, The Law of Attraction...which posits, in a nutshell, that you can attract good events into your life simply by thinking about them.

A skill I probably shouldn't talk about with such a degree of cynicism. Not wanting to attract cynicism at all. Should want to attract zzzzzz's. Or just relief that I'm still on vacation. Right now I'm sitting in my pregnant sister's living room, in the pitch black, steps away from her bedroom door, afraid she'll wander out for a bathroom stop and have a horrible tripping accident after she freaks out because I'm still sitting here using her laptop and exhibiting atrocious posture while doing so.

There it is....an entire thought chain I shouldn't even entertain... Sorry, Oprah.

Long ago, writing messages with a message at 2 a.m. were a weekly staple of my working life. My first job out of college was as a reporter for a fine weekly newspaper in southern Minnesota. I'll spare you the laborious details of my writing and photography prowess....which were OK. But I certainly most excelled at the ability to attend a school board meeting featuring angry citizens railing about property taxes, write a story on it, develop and make photos from four rolls of film, then lay out eight pages of that week's paper and add captions and headlines, and THEN write my personal column for the editorial page....all between the hours of 8 p.m. Tuesday and 8 a.m. Wednesday, nearly every week, for four years.

From that era, there is a book's-worth of my writing, mainly ruminations similar to what you have just read....space-filler stuff, perhaps....amazingly printed in ink and disseminated to the public.

Tonight I'm trying to see if that old magic will fly with y'all.

And wonder aloud if non-single folks, with a kind soul lying next to them snoring or otherwise more interestingly occupying one's self, ever succumb to this kind of silliness at such a bleak hour on this most suspicious of calendar days.