The hands on the clock go round and round.

There are some diarists here at Diaryland whom I will never meet, but whose words inspire me beyond description. Without their sought approval, I am going to endorse them anyway, hoping that perhaps some of the readers I send their way will appreciate them the same way I do. One such diarist is a young man recently finished his B.A. and soon to start on his Masters, a self-styled �desk jockey� whose prose elevates his mundane existence out of the realm of ordinary and into a totally other sphere. He goes by the name spacemuppet, and I�m not really sure how I found him. Perhaps he was on the buddy list of someone I was reading then and, even though he does not update as often as he used to (or as I would like him to), I have kept him on mine because his sporadic offerings are like a draught of Olympian nectar.

The other one is known as jonquill, another young man living in New York City (as spacemuppet did during his undergrad years), who writes about everyday things in such a way that they become great art. He too doesn�t update often enough, which is frustrating, but when he does, it is a gift.

Today I had another headache, this time it felt as though an ice pick had been inserted into my left eye. I�m seriously getting tired of these things. It seemed to go away after a while, especially since I took some ASA, but it was plaguing me at the beginning of a lesson. I slept for about an hour when I got home from the university, and that seemed to help as well.

I wound the grandfather clock and noticed that it didn�t have a minute hand, which meant that I had to fish around with the fireplace tongs in the bottom of the long case to pick it up. I also found a washer down there which was necessary for keeping it in place, and along with another washer which was sitting on the ledge just under the clock face, and a makeship cotter pin fashioned from part of a paper clip, the ornate needle is back in place and the clock seems to be working fine. I think I�ll have to call the horlogier though to come back and take a look.

This all happened because from time to time, if the clock doesn�t get wound, if it suddenly runs down while it�s striking the hour (as happens if it�s a long hour), the number of chimes will be out of sync with the actual hour shown on the face. This requires me to climb on the end table and manipulate the minute hand in a faster-than-it-can strike fashion until I get the hour and the chimes lined up again. Hence the loosening and loss of the minute hand and its attendant washers. The paper clip is not elegant. For now it works, but eventually it will have to go.

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