My mother walked into the computer room to find me staring at a blank Word docu- ment.

"Um, hi," I said.

"Hi," she offered in return. "Writer's block?"

"Yup," I said. "Nothing happened last week. Abso- lutely nothing."

"Well," she pointed out, "nothing happened the week before last and you still squeezed a column."

"Yeah. A column about something that happened over Christmas break."

"Well," she said, "your seeds arrived last week. Write about that."

"Well, yeah, but that's hardly a whole column. I have standards, Mom."

She sighed. "Isn't there anything that happened last week? Surely there...