Wonderful blogger/artist Michael Nobbs posted a nice entry yesterday about swapping in his old, "manual" teapot for his busted electric one. Apparently, when it comes to boiling water (many of us on the other side of the pond are less familiar with the finer points of tea-prep), electric is better, or at least, it's faster (which most of us on this side of the pond are raised from birth to believe is better).

The additional heating time required by putting actual fire to metal is serving the unintended purpose of getting Michael himself to slow down. He talks about using the protracted boiling time to draw and think, thereby setting a leisurely pace for the day.

While the story mainly makes me want to go online and research the purchase of one of these super-speedy kettles, the beauty of the outside force stepping in to gently (or not so gently) remind us of summut or another is not lost on me. I've got my own governor right now, a smallish but nevertheless very real bug I woke up with a couple of days ago.

Ordinarily, my response to the governors in my life is to figure out a workaround: more coffee, usually, and a whole lot of pretending it isn't there. But the thing about a governor is that it's there for a reason: in the case of rental trucks, to keep a sedan-driving yahoo from trashing the goods; in the case of the human body...well, it's pretty much the same thing.

So instead of cursing my governor, I'm going to submit to it: move a little more slowly, go to bed a little bit earlier, drink a little less coffee and a lot more water.

Maybe I'll even crack open the sketchbook. I've heard it has magical healing powers.

Or maybe I'll just pull a pre-made JPEG to augment this entry. Shortcuts have magical healing powers, too.

xxx
c