weather

Geez, it got cold quickly! I just started wearing shoes (not sandals) last week. Fall came so early this year that I feel like I missed it. But I’m glad to have some winter. It started early in the Dale three years ago, but then the winter was warm and depressing afterward. Maybe we’ll get some nice winter wonderland this time around in Charm City? I’d better get some better fenders for my bike!  My storm windows are closed at home, and I actually wore my scarf at lunch yesterday at a nice cafe’.

My bike is getting rained on right now.  And there’s nothing covering the seat.  I am going to have a squooshy ride home.

I’ll be happier when I get a new camera to document the earliest autumn in recent memory though. But today, it’s raining, possibly storming later. My knee’s been bothering me, and I enjoy the bus. So I rode in that noisy beast’s belly today. Grabbed a coffee at work just now, crossing the street on cold sandaled feet and under the cheap black umbrella I bought at South Station in Boston eight weeks ago today. It reminds me of fall 2002, when I lived in Boston and when we had a spectacular fall. We went to Salem and celebrated Halloween like never before. Walden Pond on what might be the most beautiful fall day I have ever lived through.

It also reminds me that, this time five years ago, I was speeding (literally, doing like 90 mph because I was an idiot) toward Baltimore to get married. Regardless of how the wedding actually went (what, with certain family members who — admittedly — tried to ruin it because they didn’t like our style and our refusals of their suggestions), October 4th is my favorite day. And regardless of the stressful, infuriating, quick event our wedding was, October 4th was also the day that we got together, back in 1997.

So while people keep asking me how many years October 4th makes, I qualify my answer that it’s eleven for me. My wedding was not when I was committed. It was not even when I was publicly committed. It didn’t change how I feel about my wife at all. Nothing can.

I wish I could sit home with a good book on a day like today. I like my job. Here I am, hyped up on coffee and with a few minutes to spare. And I’m blogging on company time, on a computer that is supposed to be “monitored.” But, like I said, I like my job. A lot. Being a VISTA is great, and I have a nice little office with nice people in nice little offices up here on the top floor.  I have a lot of lunch meetings, but not today.  Today, I get to do my favorite thing aside from biking up to Charles Village to meet Mrs. P.: get a coffee/snack and hole up in my office for an hour reading a good book.  It’s a good way to spend lunchtime.

I wussed out and took the bus to work today. I rode the bus three days last week, but that’s because The Duke was tire-less. I’ll ride my bike in the rain, and I have. But “severe storms” — no. Not if I don’t have to. Not today. The bus picks me up outside my apartment building and drops me at Penn Station, across Charles Street from my office. It’s a good deal. I am soaked now from a coffee run with a co-worker. My sandals are on the AC vent drying. My bike is at home with new rim tape, new tubes and new tires with frikkin Kevlar in them. I feel like I’m cheating or being disloyal.

I am tired. I went to see Candlebox with my brother Sunday night, tickets to which show (along with a Tshirt) were my birthday gift. It was a hell of a lot of fun, but I was beat yesterday. Yesterday, I worked from 9am - 8pm and ate pasta and green beans when I got home and watched TV and went to bed. I’m still tired, but that could be the weather now that I think of it.

This blog got all “this happened, and I did this, etc.” all the sudden.

Geez, with this crappy weather, I found myself like this little bird today, hunkering down in head-to-toe flannel and socks.  I did walk to the market in the rain, with a hoody.  I swung my folded umbrella, to alert people that I was in fact enjoying some rain, rather than forgetful of said umbrella.  Stupid decision, since I went from not feeling well to feeling worse.  I watched Broken Flowers when my work was done.  Drank too much coffee, too.

Did I mention that I learned how to use a sewing machine?

[This is from three years ago, when I had a balcony on which I hang stuff like birdhouses.  I didn't move.  Again.]