Sometimes, nothing is the best thing to do.

Too depressed and distracted to do much positive today so I concentrated on doing obvious, non-pressing duties such as storing tools I’d pulled out to work on the pool, laundry, washing dishes, etc. I mailed the required copies of Letters From Stacy to the Library of Congress.

And I picked up my pool pump from Jacksonville Electric Motor Exchange.

Can you imagine -- the repair shop bumped work on my pool pump back because some housing development needed repairs for their sewerage treatment pump which handles waste from a hundred homes. Mr. Fuller, the repairman, felt that work on their pump deserved priority over mine so he delayed fixing my pump by about three hours.

But I had my order in first!

I mean it’s like going to a hospital emergency room with a toothache and here comes some guy having a heart attack and the triage nurse jumps him to the head of the line and makes me wait even though I was there first.

It’s just not fair.

I wonder if prayer works like that? I wonder if God is fair? Could it be that He thinks that there are more important people and issues in the universe than ME?

That’s something to ponder.

Meanwhile, Donald took today off work and took me out to lunch at Arden’s (on Hamilton St. at St. Johns) where we enjoyed the finest food ever cooked in Jacksonville.

I mean Bill Gates did not eat any better than we did today! Good stuff!

Donald and I just hung out all afternoon talking about life, God, computers, books -- and women, a subject more complex than any of the others.

Donald looked over the pagination problem with the Stacy Letters and advised me to forget it because the thing that bugs me is only cosmetic, unrelated to the accuracy of the material. It’s just a vanity thing for me that no one else is likely to even notice.

I have not decided how to handle the questions the Civil War buff raises. When I wrote the piece I used a lot of source material only available on microfilm and now, years later, my eyesight (I have macular degeneration) hinders my being able to confirm or correct what I wrote back then.

My e-friend Eric advises that I leave it alone. He said, “What does this require of you? I'm totally curious. If you just say "okay, fine" and move on without doing a thing, what are the repercussions?”

Good advice.

I think that to be fair, that as soon as I finish the pool work and the Glog manuscript and get to updating my website, I’ll just post Civil War buff’s letter as an addendum to the article I wrote so readers can check the sources for them selves… Would that work? Like the pool pump and the sewerage pump, it’s a matter of priorities.

Concerning depression, a thing that helps me is that when my thoughts get to beating up on me, I simply say (aloud if necessary) the word STOP! Then I redirect my mind in more productive channels. If thoughts fall in the same rut again, I say Stop again and move on. That technique really helps me.

However, for a positive Christian active approach to handling depression, this morning I sat down reading a murder mystery and ate half a box of chocolate-covered cherries. … That’s what Jesus would do, isn’t it?