Hot black coffee in a white cup. The furnace growling at the cold slipping beneath the doors. Today my essay workshop begins. And I'll be editing a novel. And I'll be figuring out some Frost Place stuff. And I'll be walking to a yoga class. And I'll be making kale and potato soup for dinner.

While I'm doing all that stuff, perhaps you can ponder these paragraphs from Johnson's The Birth of the Modern. La plus ça change . . .

Men disliked [England's Prince Regent; later George IV] because he was an inveterate liar. Indeed, he was a fantasist who could convince himself that certain imaginary things had happened. He would threaten all kinds of things one minute, for effect, then forget what he had said and do the opposite. He would abruptly change his mood from resentful fury, vowing revenge, saying he would dismiss his ministers on the spot, to bland politeness or even affability, with no explanation at all. In the end, as [the duke of Wellington's friend] Mrs. Arbuthnot put it, "The King is such a blockhead nobody minds what he says." . . . 

 . . . The fact that George preferred female company did not mean that ladies liked him; quite the contrary. Outside his own family, all the women with whom he was intimately connected came to regret it. Perhaps his greatest love, Mrs. Fitzherbert, whom he actually married, albeit unlawfully, came to regard him with a mixture of distaste and weariness.