unnaturally warm today - i think i saw 6 degrees in the morning and 9 on the way home. didn't appreciate it much since i'd dressed up for my usual 0-to-3 and stayed at work a good two hours later than i'd intended to with a good two hours less sleep than i'd meant to get. and oh yeah, that ESE 24 GUST 33 i see on enviro can's retro-list would be the headwind that kept me company all the way home. sez it's going to keep getting warmer all week too; it just better not rain all summer to make up for it.

something i really like about winter commuting is this: out on a bike i get to see so much more sky, and it's a so-much-more-textured sky than i'd get from a car. there's a section where i swoop through the intersecton and onto the bike path and then start the climb up the bridge, which gives me a view like a bruegel painting to hold in my mind every day. i can't picture myself liking the summer views quite so much. winter is so much more interesting once you get past the way it is and start to look for textures instead of colours. i like that pewtery gold that i got this morning.

the morning ride. i lost an hour somewhere, still don't know where it went. cat woke me at 6:30 with a fresh kill of somebody's steak (huh?). but it was 9 before i set out, and the day's first discovery was that my headlight was as dead as mutton. one of those typical left-handed-luck things: a pain to discover, but better noticed at 9 am in your own doorway than at 8:47 pm in a dark parking lot. kind of the way it goes when you can only claim 1/4 of the luck of the irish, i guess. i stopped at the only store-like establishment i actually pass on the way to work (a gas station), and got more batteries. that's so typical of this entire wrong-headed setup: you can get anything you want or need on your way to or from work, so long as it's either furniture, office supplies, gas or batteries. food you need a visa into the next planet to find. it works for people who live in their cars and give up all their free time to basic life maintenance, but anyone else can't help but fall behind in the count.

i've said this before: i have got to eat properly during the week. today i ate jelly beans and apples and a sleeve of french fries because that's what there was, and i had to be off-site to get the french fries. then i left work too late to consider any kind of catchup even if there had been anywhere to get it done. it just doesn't make for a solid ride home. brain the size of a planet and all down with the batteries, but she can't keep herself fed, sigh. i will miss the breugel vistas when i'm free of this place, but by god i won't miss anything else. fifteen commuting days left to freedom.

songs: 20 years, peggy seeger; don't look at me, michael marra; the homeless do not seem to drink in here, michael marra.