Miserable week here. Bitter cold, which has never bothered me quite so much. Did manage to finish H.W. Brands' 800-page Franklin Roosevelt biography, Traitor to His Class. Fiddled with year-end list stuff, which I expect to wrap up today. That meant streaming a lot of stuff from Rhapsody: a couple of finds (Fruit Bats, Black Moth Super Rainbow, Khaled) and near-finds (2562, Lack of Afro), some hyped albums that weren't as bad as I expected (Horrors, Wild Beasts, Decemberists, Baroness, Health, Dan Deacon, Big Pink, Andrew Bird), some that were worse (Dinosaur Jr., Brendan Benson, Julian Casablancas). Will post that later this week.

Sorry about the jazz. I've played things but just haven't felt like writing about them. Jazz Consumer Guide is in same state it's been in for 3-4 weeks now: full up, needs some tweaking including a few records I've put off too long. Have a lot of new stuff to listen to, but closing out this column is mostly figuring out what to do with what I've already sorted out. Could take a week, maybe two, but can't be committed until I get started. Safe to say the likely publication date has slipped well into February.

Warmed up to about 40F today, so that's a relief. Finished my data file on year-end lists. Will write up something on that soon, once I make sure it all looks right.