At the first of the month, I do the boring computer stuff. I clean the desktop and the downloads folder. I empty the trash. I update my boilerplate file and a spreadsheet where I chart web stats. It’s boring. It takes just a few minutes. And, on a grim and gray weekend such as this, it didn’t take long enough. But that’s done.
I stayed inside, at least until last night, when I carried the garbage can down to the end of the drive. It was 25 degrees but it somehow felt much, much colder. The pains of winter in the vain hopes of an early spring.
Back home, leaves will be budding on trees in two weeks. They’re already having temperatures in the 70s. It isn’t the winter I mind so much, it’s knowing that here, at the start of February, we still have two or more months of it.
But I’ll try not to grouse about it.
I also prepared two days of class conversations, and did some ironing. (Look how productive you can be when you don’t have to go outside!) And today I went to class and shared some of those notes and questions I’d prepared over the weekend. We are talking this week about media and culture. I’m not sure if I’ll do that very well. Next week, though, we’ll start talking about different types of media in different places, and hopefully that’ll go better.
In my campus office I sat and did work stuff, the unremarkable but necessary sort of work we all do from time-to-time. I feel like that’s what this whole week will be like.
Before I left, I stood in the window and thought the deep thoughts that one thinks while staring out the window. This is the view.
I’ve had worse views. My last one was of a parking lot, and a building that was being razed. Prior to that, there were three offices with no windows. Before that, it was the gravel lot that held the dumpsters. A few years before that I had studio offices on the top of a small mountain that looked down into the city. That was nice. But each view has its own pleasures, and this one does as well. There’s the corner neighborhood just below, but all of those trees beyond. In the middle ground, that transmitter is about half a mile away. It sits in the local electrical company’s backyard.
My mood about the weather probably isn’t helped that, everywhere I looked on the maps trying to find that transmitter, all of the road views where in June, July, September. Everything was thick, full, verdant. Warm.
Just 13 miles away from that window view, and in that same direction, is our home. When the sun gets that low it is time to head that direction. I got back just before it became truly dark. At least the days are doing their part of getting longer.
Let’s check in on the kitties, who remind me that I’m contractually obligated to point out are the most popular weekly feature on the site. That spreadsheet I mentioned proves it.
Phoebe has been enjoying the midday sun in the dining room. It’s a popular spot just now. Not a bad place to spend your afternoons.
Poseidon usually sits with me in the mornings, but I found myself on the sofa in the early afternoon recently and he took the opportunity to maximize his lap time.
Lap time is very important around here.
Tomorrow, I’ll go back to campus. Two days in a row!
