On one of the counters in my bathroom, I have one of those peel-away calendars with a daily saying from the Dalai Lama. I started it in January, 2005 and I was peeling away dutifully for a few months. The current date showing is May 17, so it is exactly one year since I stopped.

I have come to think of that as the time that "the wheels came off" in terms of routine and scheduling. It's not clear to me that things have eased off too much, or at least not until this summer.

I've posted approximately three times in this space since then. Fortunately, I've had a chance to catch up at some point with all the people I envision as readers, but I thought it might be nice to outline what I have been up to, after all.