Things that have been hibernating will come to life one week from tomorrow, my son, managers will return from vacations, projects idling in the water will pop into overdrive and resolutions made in the last few weeks will start speaking softly into your ear like some forgotten hangover from hell: ("pushups, Sole baby, time for the pushups you promised....).

This next week is a time to make lists, get the brain in focus, clean up the files, get the laundry done, pound down the starting blocks, be ready to answer questions in coherent simple sentences much as you did before this Christmas business arrived.

He's taken a look at some more of the journals. There's a page on the DJR site, the DJR Awards that lists some good ones. The Sole Proprietor may actually start reading more of these himself, something he's avoided successfully so far, but, for example, take a look at Kim Rollins last entry at sugar & preserve. There are those who hope she will return, feeling better with this world and .... well, fuck. The Sole Proprietor doesn't care about her feeling better or feeling worse (although, what the hell, better is "better"), just come back sweetheart and keep that copy coming. You wonder why some people only photograph in black and white? Look at those velvet blacks and the captured emotion. Images as powerful as these can be dangerous. Too easy to confuse the art with the life and the life with the art.

Images like these are taken late at night in a bar with a road out front leading into oblivion (or LA, whichever comes first). There's a link on the DJR awards page that leads, he thinks, to some comments by her significant other, now left in the dust with the rest. The Sole Proprietor will skip those: this is, after all, Ms. Rollins journal. You only get to play when she lets you. He'll skip reading any of her old entries as well, those are chapters past. Read for the day. He'll wait, respectfully, for Ms. Rollins return.

It's cold in Oakland this morning. The heater in his apartment doesn't work and turning on the oven doesn't do much except heat the kitchen. The Sole Proprietor came to California for the warmth. There has always been a couple of weeks, generally during January, when the temperature dropped and it was very cold. If this El Nino, El Nina, Global Warming thing means it gets cold in San Francisco (its always cold in San Francisco, but he means really cold in San Francisco) he's moving to some warmer climate near an ocean. Scoop talks about Christmas near the ocean under the sun in a pool. That sounds like a mantra: "Christmas near the ocean under the sun in a pool, Christmas near the ocean under the sun in a pool, Christmas near the ocean under the sun in a pool...."

The Sole Proprietor will leave with this thought from Kim Rollins: "I really can't bear web journals that drone on and on about the process of keeping a journal on the web. Shut up, already, and write." Neither can the Sole Proprietor, kid, one reason he never reads his own.