Yesterday felt like my first winter commute. When I left my office it was a sunny afternoon, almost warm riding the CitiBike to Penn Station. Got on my train and promptly fell asleep, and next thing I knew the sun was setting behind a rapidly moving panorama of suburban nj. By the time I got off the train, the sky was dark but for a band of orange along the southwest horizon, one bright planet and a half moon above it.

Wasn't until I got home that I realized my tail light wasn't working. Loose connection, I found it eventually, but those things are hard to diagnose.

For the next six weeks I'll be watching the sunset from the train window, disappearing a little earlier every day, and riding home in the dark; and then the process will reverse itself.

There will come an evening, a few months from now, when I'll see an edge of the sun just disappearing over the trees when I get off my train, and I'll know it's almost spring... but for now, it feels like it's going to be a long winter.