A buffer is a fragile thing, and I’ve been nursing mine along, holding it’s deathly pale hand from day to day.  Well today, it well and finally passed.  Today’s strip was finished mere moments from posting time.  My buffer was a fine thing, I enjoyed having it around, the safety and comfort it provided me was without measure.  And in it’s passing, I am left adrift, bereft of my finest friend.  Henceforth, I shall have to work twice as hard, what was once dead, shall rise again, maybe not as strong as it was before, but arise it shall.  Like a sickly phoenix, with a touch of the bronchitis, it shall croak from day to day, some days gaining strength, others, threatening to slip back into the oblivion from which it sprang, a pale, anemic shadow of it’s former self.