Fighting Winter funk with half-price calendars

Yes, I know I've only been laid off for something like ten days.  Yes, I know it's the week between Christmas and New Year's, and I'm probably not going to get much accomplished anyway.  But still...

I used to get by on four to five hours of sleep each day.  Wake up, eat, get ready for work, go to work, come home, go to sleep.  Repeat.  Now I'm getting something like nine or ten hours of sleep, and that's only because I'm forcing myself out of bed.

There's a lot of stuff I should be doing that I haven't done.  Basic stuff.  But it seems like the day slips by so quickly, and then the days slip by so quickly.  Last week, at least I had the excuse of baking Christmas cookies.  This week, not so much.

Yesterday was Calendar Day, the day that calendar prices in bricks-and-mortar retailers traditionally drop to 50% off.  Frankly, I'm surprised any calendars get sold before then.  Late yesterday afternoon I decided to head out to the local megachain bookstore to see what they had to offer.  Unfortunately, this was about the time that the super monster blizzard hit.  It dumped nearly an inch of snow on us - well, maybe more, but the 50-mile-per-hour winds tended to scour it away.  About halfway up I found myself wondering what the hell I was doing, and what I was going to buy.  I have my Life In Hell calendar, and my Guy Ottewell Astronomical Calendar, and a nifty free calendar from my church.  I did need a traditional Astronomy or Space calendar, but I remembered partway up that Barnes & Noble tends to have a lousy selection of these - and they didn't disappoint.  As I wandered through the calendar stacks over and over I again found myself wondering what the hell I thought I was doing.

Then I saw them:  planners.  Week-at-a-glance, month-at-a-glance, page-a-day, two-pages-a-day.  Mostly in fake leather covers with butterflies or embossed paisley patterns, but still - nothing says "I'm ready to head back into the world of employment, but can't afford a nifty smart phone to enter all my interview times and other crucial appointments, and besides, I consider those to be frivolous and you probably don't allow them in your facility anyway"  like a planner.  I knew I had a couple of Day-Timers or at least Day-Timerish things scattered around the house, and I also have a very nice portable office thingie that consists of a leatherette zipping pouch about the length of a legal pad with a captive letter pad and all sorts of compartments for business cards and documents and stuff.  It also has enough interior space to hold  few other things, including a week-at-a-glance spiral-bound calendar, particularly after I ripped out all the pages from July through the last week of December 2010 (it was an 18-month book - very much like this, but with a plain black cover and red spirals).

So that's what I grabbed, along with a Scientific American Astronomy calendar that is the sequel to one I currently have hanging up.  Maybe sometime later I'll go out looking elsewhere for a Terence Dickinson Astronomy calendar, or some 2011 pages for the unused burgundy Day Runner I purchased in early 2001 when it looked like I might be changing employers.  Maybe sometime later I'll get around to doing the things I need to be doing.

But for now I have taken a first step.  I have bought a little weekly planner.  Now I just need some stuff to write in it.