How I spent an afternoon off.

The office closed early today, and amazingly enough, my afternoon meeting was canceled. Yay. So I went to the farmer's market (not really full season here yet, but I got some chard, snap peas, and beautiful strawberries), and then came home to fight some more with a cryptic crossword grid.

Those of you who do crosswords professionally: how in heaven's name do you do this day after day? It took me hours, spread over three days, with heavy computer assistance, to come up with a grid. I did eventually succeed, and I think the result is passable, if not wonderful. But it was a painful experience.

Admittedly, I gave myself a lot of constraints to work with in terms of the words I could use, but sheesh. Clearly my knack for interpreting puzzle grids does not extend to filling them.

Now, to clue it all...