What is time to a water rat? What is time to the river? Only we humans obsess over days and minutes, hours and seasons.

Be patient with your boaters and let them rant. Most of them will get over it come December.

One takes what the river offers, both good and bad. The joy of living by running water far outweighs the sorrow.

Keep your hand on the helm.

Any place with year-round Christmas lights is a place I want to be. I usually see them in dive bars, strung along cheap sheet paneling where they cast their twinkly glow on the tap handle of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, where Pabst is drank for what it is instead of ironically, like in some other bars.

That's the thing with Jameson. Some bottles are smooth. Some bottles burn like hell. You don't know which until it's open. I'd caught a bad one and told myself it'd get better with each sip.