In the Bleak Midwinter is not the kind of Christmas carol that a kid would exactly like but it is one of my favorite carols these days. Minor key or maybe even a modal key but not one that I can exactly identify all these years away from my musical education. It doesn’t matter. It has an interesting harmony and that’s why I like it.

I am at my best when I walk around 10 miles a day. I rarely get to do that. I do not have time. For a long time though, I was managing to walk a half hour at lunch-time and then eat at my desk while working. For various reasons, I haven’t been doing that lately. I was running holiday/grokkery-related errands during my lunch or I didn’t have the right clothing so I just hung out. Today. I needed to get outta there for a while at noon. I had no errands to run. It wasn’t terribly cold out (24 degrees Fahrenheit) and I could dress up my bizcaz outfit for a half hour of tromping the Great Outdoors. I tromped over to the nature trail and, on the way back, I took this photo. With my new generation iPhone. It is largely black-and-white but I loved the colors and I cannot in any way call them “bleak”. They were beautiful to me and I love this time of year when I walk in the dark every morning and drive home in the dark after work. In a month, things will be a bit different.

I will be more careful about my walking route the next time I do my noon walk though. Today, I cut across the “tundra” instead of using the mowed path and several times, some small mammal scooted into a hole before my big ugly boots could step on it. I’m not looking for food, little mammals. I get it at the grokkery store after somebody else kills it. I don’t want to disturb small aminals in the wild.

Our older beach urchin made it back to SanFran safely today after a flight cancellation yesterday. First stop? Mr. Pickle. A wonderful place to eat. Back in October, I had a turkey/cranberry wrap. We ate our sandwiches at Dolores Park after visiting Mission Bicycle (plug here). And then we went to the yarn store at the bottom of the big vertigo-inducing hill and my hands were still greasy from my sandwich and, boy those folks wasted no time directing me to a bathroom so I could clean my hands. So I wouldn’t get wrap-sandwich juice on any of their yarn, don’tcha know.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 at 7:04 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.