Blue Skies, Whiteness, 12º

7:54

7:55

7:59

7:59

Coyote on the Ice

It’s 7:50, and I’ve been up since 6:30, watching the sky slowly change colors. What a surprise it was to eventually see blue skies and the sun rising just about now. No snow is predicted for today, though we must have gotten two or three inches overnight, so I’ll be out shoveling again. My neighbor just texted, and we’re planning to walk Long Point at 10:00. The sun has come out in full force, so I’ve had to move to another chair because it’s suddenly so bright.

Morning Sun On Couch

Thursday was an interesting day. I was up early at 6:30, woke Evie at 7:00, and we had our coffee, listened to the news, and wrote the blog. I planned to go to yoga, but first I had to shovel the driveway and then take the Outback out of the garage so Evie could drive it to school. I had parked the loaner car in our neighbors’ driveway about 100 yards from our house, so I walked down, brushed the snow off, and then came back to get ready for yoga.

I grabbed my yoga bolster and a blanket, went back down to the loaner, started it, scraped the ice off the windshield, and headed out. When I was within a mile of the yoga studio, I suddenly wondered where I’d put the fob for the keyless ignition. After searching my pockets, I realized I had left it at home. If I continued on to yoga, I wouldn’t be able to start the car afterward. So I turned around, drove home, grabbed the fob, and went back to yoga—about twenty minutes late. I’m still amazed the car started in our neighbors’ driveway at all, given that the fob was sitting in our house at least 100 yards away.

In any case, I got in forty-five minutes of yoga, apologized for being late, and then stopped by Ryder’s Cup for coffee, hoping to see my friend Paul. Unfortunately, his wife said he wasn’t up to seeing anyone that day, so I’ll try again another time.

When I got home, the house was quiet with Evie still at school. I heated up leftover spaghetti and meatballs and started a series I know I watched a couple of years ago. One advantage of aging is forgetting books and shows you’ve already read or watched—and getting to enjoy them all over again. Evie returned around 2:00, exhausted from her day at school because she had to help the kids get dressed to play outside, coats, gloves, hats, whatever. I was on the phone with my Schwab advisor about consolidating our retirement accounts. We eventually got it done, though not without some frustration—passwords continue to defeat us. Thankfully, Austin was incredibly patient and walked us through the process, which took at least an hour. It’s done now and should save us a fair amount of money.

After that hassle, I read for a while, and Evie watched her show. Around 4:30, I went outside and shoveled again—another two or three inches had fallen. It was so beautiful out, with snow coating the trees and blanketing the yards, that I went for a short walk around the neighborhood. This is the kind of day we both love.

Home

Snowy Woods

Woodlawn Evergreen

We had our wine at 5:00, and Evie fried up some potatoes and cooked steelhead trout from Aldi in the air fryer. The trout was great, the potatoes filling, and afterward we started a new series—or rather, the second season of Doc, another hospital-based show. After Evie went to bed, I watched some basketball, then returned to my series, Blue Lights. I read until 11:00 and then turned off the light.

Quotation Of The Day From Adam Frank:

“Give me a young star, and I can use the reductionist laws of physics to predict that star’s future: It will live a million years rather than a billion years; it will die as a black hole rather than as a white dwarf. But the components of a living organism yield something new and unexpected, a phenomenon called ‘emergence.’ Give me a simple cell from the early days of Earth’s history, and I could never predict that some four billion years later it would evolve into a giant rabbit that can punch you in the face. Kangaroos — like humans — are an unpredictable, emergent consequence of life’s evolution.”