Jimmy and I have enjoyed this college football season immensely, and are lamenting the fact that it's nearly over. Always enjoyable in the past, this year it has been especially exciting, and it could not have come at a better time for us. We haven't been exactly what Grandmother Mackey would call "shut-ins", but one could say that our opportunities for entertaining ourselves have been limited. We're pondering our options as to how to fill the void this winter.

It would be interesting to know how many books Jimmy has read in the past eight months: always a voracious reader, he has been plowing through one book after another at breakneck speed. It's becoming more and more difficult to find something he hasn't read, and harder still to remember what he HAS read.

For whatever reason, he has shied away from anything too serious or thought-provoking. Of late, his taste has turned more toward escapist macho fare: legal thrillers, detective and adventure stories and such. He eschews romances, family sagas, bodice-rippers, and, with some exceptions (i.e. Elizabeth George, Margaret Atwood, Ruth Rendel, P.D. James), most female writers.

Other than sports and the occasional good movie, television has become virtually unwatchable.The news is all doom and gloom, or politics ad nauseam; everything else is either silly and moronic or vulgar and offensive, often a combination of both. It's no wonder we're in such a blue funk about college football's ending so soon.