Yelapa, Jalisco, Mexico. Our eighth winter here, and it's almost over. Today, which began cool and overcast, turned sunny and hot, and is now cool and overcast again, finds us with only three weeks left here. We came down for three months and our stay has now dwindled to three weeks. Soon, as time flies, we'll be looking at only three days left before our departure.

So it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut would say, were he still alive. I'm reading a good biography of Vonnegut by Charles J Shields, one his subject might not have approved of, given that we're shown the author who was a 1960s icon and the idol of the hippie generation, warts and all. Like most writers, Vonnegut's writing showed his best side. Some of the people who knew him saw his worst.

And so it goes . . . which happens to be the title of Shields's biography.