Well, wasn't I in a melancholy mood before retiring yesterday? I blame it on the dog days of August.

This time of year, the Dog Star--Sirius, in the constellation Canis Major--starts appearing in the sky just before dawn for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, after hiding behind the sun for most of the summer. The ancient Greeks and Romans believed that it was Sirius in combination with the Sun that causes so much of the heat we feel at this time of year. Those crazy Greeks and Romans.

Regardless of how we got the term, these days are the worst of our summer and it shows. The Southern Hemisphere webloggers are just going to have to carry the rest of us for a week or two.