MINNEAPOLIS — Expanding the campaign map into a state next to his own, Representative Paul D. Ryan held his first rally in Minnesota in the dwindling hours of the race on Sunday, dividing remarks between criticism of President Obama for failing to lead and promising that a Romney White House would reach across the partisan chasm as the president had not.
Normally, a candidate spends the dwindling hours before the Christmas break in states that vote first, like Iowa, where the voting starts in less than two weeks and where Mr. Gingrich is dropping in the polls under a barrage of negative attacks.
Prospectors measure out the days of life remaining to them in cups of flour; an Indian reckons his dwindling hours by the number of sticks he has left to burn; "shirks and chronic grumblers" are punished by being left to one another's company, which dooms them.
The fact that Americans are sleeping less is unsurprising; the National Sleep Foundation has been documenting the dwindling hours of shut-eye for the past decade.
It is not designed to help us better tolerate the steam-rolling experience of 12-hour work days and three-hour commutes, short shrift meals and dwindling hours of sleep.
He, the father, ground into dust by the grain alcohol that he spends his dwindling hours consuming while quoting from the poets, whose names and words are lost on the boy and forgotten as the natural power of the earth arises before him like a lord and master.
In richer parts of the world, death is likely to arrive in a nursing home, or in a hospital — precisely where we most dread spending our dwindling hours.
On Sunday evening Shea Stadium, a performance space in Bushwick, Brooklyn, had the feel of a dorm party in its dwindling hours.
Risking impropriety, only one backer was willing to say Oakley-Dokley, as the campaign has raised only $25 of its $8,000 in its dwindling hours.
