give me the splendid silent sun

Ashley is feeling very depressed, and I am feeling very unhelpful. She's down in large part due to her job situation, and I am not exactly thrilled with that part of my life myself. I have little substantive advice to offer or encouragement to give. One of the great things about being married is that there is someone there to help cheer you up when you're feeling bad; the converse of that is that there may be someone there to pull you down when you're feeling good. And if you're both stressed or anxious or feeling particularly out of sorts, well, the prospects aren't good. One's gray mood tends to compound the other's. That's where we seem to find ourselves for the moment.

In better news, we have Ryan Adams tickets, and Pete is having a get-together.

"It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall,
The dark threw its patches down upon me also,
The best I had done seem'd to me blank and suspicious,
My great thoughts as I supposed them, were they not in reality meagre?"

- Walt Whitman, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry