PAUL CHRISTENSEN

I was pacing around the house for days, distracted by almost anything I saw -- an ashtray full of pipe tobacco ashes, a bird erasing its shadow on the window, the wind making the trees chatter like novelty jaws, the rumble of a truck on the road. I knew all this was the way my mind kept me off the real subject, which was how I would feel come 20 January. Would I be happy, really happy, or would I smirk cynically and say it's just more daffy rhetoric to get us past the Capitol