I have been working all day at the TLS. I love it but oh what a responsibility? It's a good thing I'm not more eclectic than I am or I would be in real trouble. As it is I have clippings to file, notes to absorb and books to order, not to mention people and books to check online. I have stayed all day within four feet of my radiant heater. Without it, I congeal. I dread going to bed at night, but I pile on the blankets and I have a small heating pad andI huddle.

I have been thinking of going to a pub on the Danforth that has a real working fireplace and renting a seat by the fire with red wine to keep coming, OR to rent a hotel room and be warm all night. I can't afford either of these solutions. I have not heard from my unchallenged son since I asked for his advice about what kind of heater to buy; that was last week. He said talk to my super - yes, of course, why didn't I think of that? I think he's challenged, too. I did, but it was a long, new year weekend and not all the apartments are affected. So who cares? Certainly not my son.

Well, I have discovered another use of a blog. Kvetching, the participle of the verb to kvetch.

kvetch noun: a person who complains a great deal. she emerges as something of a kvetch, constantly nagging Rick.• a complaint. ‘They don't make 'em like they used to’ has become an all-purpose kvetch. verb [ no obj. ]complain persistently. Jane's kvetching about her crummy existence. ORIGIN 1960s: from Yiddish kvetsh (noun), kvetshn (verb), from Middle High German quetschen, literally ‘crush’.

The verb kind of denigrates the kvetcher, don't you think? Ah well, at least the blog doesn't argue; And no one reads it. So - it's like that fable (Aesop?) - remember? - someone witnessed something - a weird feature of a king or someone - and didn't comment and kept a straight face, but later, he/she picked up a shell - from the sea? - and told the secret to the shell. Ah, but the secret came oujt....I wonder if I can find that online.

Soon. It will take some searching.

I finally got out today (January 3) and found a radiant oscillating heater (no fan), the only heater left on a long row of empty shelves. All sold out. I guess other places are cold, too. So now I have a little nucleus of heat that I don't want to step out of. I'm catching up on a backlog of TLS (Times Literary Suplement). I've read them and marked them . Now I have to clip and make notes and order more books -- must stop buying books!

I used to get upset by the TLS, feeling so inadequate as I admired the learned quality and vast knowledge of its writers. I finally realised that each one is an expert in his/her field and not necessarily any more informed than I am in other disciplines or areas of thought. Still....

Take Michel de Montaigne, and I intend to, in fact I did a long time ago. Now it's time to re-read and think some more! If ever there was a person who invented and reinvented himself, it was Montaigne. (1533-1592) The TLS I am reading reviewed three books about this French philosopher whom we remember best as an essayist - blogger, I guess, today. Here is the conclusion to this review (by Patrick J. Murray):

"Montaigne is a writer who demands and rewards repeated re-reading. As he himself says of this own writing, 'Anyone who catches me out in ignorance does me no harm: I cannot vouch to other people for my reasoning: I can scarcely vouch for them to myself and am by no means satisfied with them."

The Essais, BTW, were published from 1580 to 1595, and published in English fro 1603 to 1613. This collection of more than 100 reflections on "subjects from war to thumbs, conversation to drunkenness, war horses to the power of the imagination", creating his own persona as he went along ("his own idea of himself"). Blog-time!

Yeah, yeah, me too! I bet his fingers were cold. No central heating in those days. No excuses.