I feel as if I am fighting to find things to write about here. Everything in my quotidian world seems too tedious to share. Our driveway is a slush-bound disaster. This morning's Facebook wall features complaints about people who say, "Happy holidays!" instead of "Merry Christmas!" In between checking manuscript corrections for a publisher, I am torturing myself with a poem draft that is like a sucking drain of badness. [Please enjoy this morning's Teenage Simile Replica®.]

Well, at moments like this, I always turn to the diaries of Samuel Pepys. Here's what was happening in London on December 11, 1660:

My wife and I up very early this day, and though the weather was very bad and the wind high, yet my Lady Batten and her mayde and we two did go by our barge to Woolwich (my Lady being very fearfull) where we found both Sir Williams and much other company, expecting the weather to be better, that they might go about weighing up the Assurance, which lies there (poor ship, that I have been twice merry in, in Captn. Holland's time,) under water, only the upper deck may be seen and the masts. Captain Stoakes is very melancholy, and being in search for some clothes and money of his, which he says he hath lost out of his cabin. I did the first office of a Justice of Peace to examine a seaman thereupon, but could find no reason to commit him. This last tide the Kingsale was also run aboard and lost her mainmast, by another ship, which makes us think it ominous to the Guiny voyage, to have two spoilt before they go out. After dinner, my Lady being very fearfull of her ships she staid and kept my wife there, and I and another gentleman, a friend of Sir W. Pen's, went back in the barge, very merry by the way, as far as Whitehall. Mr. Moore has persuaded me to put out 250l. for 50l. per annum for eight years, and I think I shall do it. Thence home and to bed. [Conclusion: Captain Stoakes is having a far worse day than I am. Mr. Moore has found that business matters are improved when the clients are drunk. What did the ladies do on the boat after the men went off to be merry?]

December 11, 1661, was even livelier:

I went out, and in my way met with Mr. Howell the Turner, who invited me to dine this day at Mr. Rawlinson's with some friends of his, officers of the Towre, at a venison pasty, which I promised him, and so I went to the Old Bayly, and there staid and drank with him, who told me the whole story how Pegg Kite has married herself to a weaver, an ugly fellow, to her undoing. From thence home and put on my velvet coat, and so to the Mitre to dinner, but going up into the room I found at least 12 or more persons, and knew not the face of any of them, so I went down again and walked to the Exchequer, and up and down, and was very hungry, and from thence home, and my wife was gone out by coach to Clerkenwell, to see Mrs. Margaret Pen, who is at schoole there. So I went to see Sir W. Pen, and he and I after some talk took a coach and went to Moorfields, and then into an alehouse and I drank some ale and eat some bread and cheese, and so being very merry we went home again. [Conclusion: Why can't a few Tower officers invite me to a gossipy lunch party at the Old Bailey? And look at these fabulous run-on sentences! My poem would be so happy! (P.S. For a good time, call Sir W. Pen.)]

So what about December 11, 1662?

Up, it being a great frost upon the snow, and we sat all the morning upon Mr. Creed's accounts, wherein I did him some service and some disservice. At noon he dined with me, and we sat all the afternoon together, discoursing of ways to get money, which I am now giving myself wholly up to, and in the evening to my office, concluding all matters concerning our great Treasurer, till almost one in the morning, and then home with my mind much eased, and so to bed. [Conclusion: This is the same day that I am having. I'm already looking forward having "my mind much eased, and so to bed."]