Ack. I’m worthless tonight. I’m in the grip of some kind of vague, unlocalized malaise, probably psychosomatic. Had to slug my way through work. My body seems to be saying to me, “Take it easy and feed me protein,” and that’s what I’m doing.

All in all, I’m glad I live in Minneapolis, and not southern California. All the world wants to live in S. Cal, but we Norwegians (at least the ones who haven’t absconded to Mission Viejo) sit here and say, “Yeah, the weather might be nice most of the time, but you gotcher earthquakes. You gotcher wildfires. Better to stay home where the disasters are usually less catastrophic, and generally come on a scheduled basis.”

It’s a particularly Norwegian point of view, I think–“I won’t ask much, but in return I expect very few bad surprises.” Comes from generations of explaining to our children why we continued to live in a place where the sun didn’t even rise half the year.

Same goes for living in Minnesota, more or less.

I was sent a quotation once. Forget who said it. Somebody commented on Charles Lindbergh’s not having much of a sense of humor, and the quotee replied, “Did you ever try to tell a joke in Minneapolis?”

To which my reply is, “Remember Lou Grant? Remember how funny his life was on the Mary Tyler Moore show, set in Minneapolis? Then he spun off to Los Angeles and his own show, and the yucks stopped cold.”

I think that settles that.

In closing, here’s a YouTube link from Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost. The kind of counselor all of us neurotics dream of (played by Bob Newhart, no less). He’s just as effective as all the others, and charges you less.