has been pretty damn good so far...

I answered a bonafide "booty call." I think that's when someone tells you they've been scuba diving and the sea anemones are fanning iridescent in the dark.

I picked out long johns -- both a top and a bottom -- for one of my best friends, and she bought them. I would have bought them for her to make sure she's not wandering around all cold-like, but she bought them because I picked them out and told her she needed them and they fit too.

I was given a yellow-orange string with a knot in the middle that "had been blessed by the Dalai Lama." I don't know if it was really blessed by the Dalai Lama, or what it means even if it was, but the knots feel nice against my sternum.

I spun prayer wheels in a clockwise order.

I haven't graded or commented on or helped write a single paper since Thursday evening, after 8:16pm.

I went clothes shopping with a friend for the first time in years. I hate shopping as a rule, but this worked. I tried on pants and they revealed my side-chops, so I didn't get them. But I still found a good book and an orange shirt and clothes for N. Moreover, I didn't get bored or irritated, and found clothes for N.

When we went into a Greek take-out place, S asked the chef if she could open and drink a recently-bought (at a Mexican grocery store) Coca-Cola, and the chef jokingly said only if she shared it with him. S poured him a full glass and handed it over the counter.

My car slid at a stop sign atop the snow-that-turned-to-ice, and I was going slow enough that it just meant we went into the gutter and then back out again.

N has seemed relapse-y during our recent phone conversations, but when I drove down to Seattle for a night at the last minute to make sure she was okay, she was okay.

I had someone to drive with, and the conversation made the trip seem very quick.

The trees in Bville, just on the other side of the hills, are tipped in white and the streets and brambles, white. The sidewalks and newspaper-dispensers: white. Coming through the white valley into sunset: peaceful, breathtaking, wordless. Leaving after sliding on the ice, heading through the glare and shortening evening: dizzying and white-glared tips.

My dog danced and danced and danced when I got home.