Temperatures in Iowa have this week dropped 30 degrees from unseasonably warm to unseasonably cold. Everyone in my house is suffering for it: neither Kathy nor I have managed to step outside for exercise, and our cats look for any excuse to sit in front of a heat register or on a lap or, sometimes, if I leave my Powerbook open, on a laptop. A cat on a Powerbook can create some very fascinating documents, but the cat in question rarely prefers to write; she prefers, instead, to languorously recline there. And the Powerbook knows her: its processor speeds up; all its insides blush with fever. Angst-ridden love is not good for Powerbooks. The poor thing. Besotted, it overheats and forgets what it was supposed to remember. Such angst-ridden love is not good for Powerbooks. They cannot understand that cats are by nature utilitarian. They use those around them as soft furniture, as tuna givers, as heat sources. This Powerbook’s love is self-destructive, and it is in its interest, as well as in mine, to chase the cat away before things get out of hand. (Alas, my love of the Powerbook is utilitarian, too, but I get the more lasting benefit.) Let her use me for heat, for in the grand scheme of things, it is better to have a cat on your lap than on your laptop.

Still no word on the real job, and in the meantime I’ve begun another, temporary one. It’s drudgery, really, that’s easy enough so long as I can stay awake throughout the day. Best about it is the overtime, which began yesterday and which I intend to take full advantage of so long as it lasts. But I hate the work. I am exhausted and cranky by day’s end. Worse, I write not, and these days I find I live by two R’s: Writing and Running make a Day Good. Today I woke at 5 o’clock so I could pound out at least this.

And this is primarily about this: Part of our design (which is not in fact ours but which was adapted from The Revealer) has caught on at The Columbia Journalism Review Daily. Columns are really efficient methods of delivering text to readers, which is why newspapers and magazines have taken advantage of them for centuries. They’ve been underused on the Web partly because designing them has until recently been either difficult or counterintuitive. So I’m glad to see major sites—and minor ones like ours—take advantage of them.

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