February 18

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The 18th was kind of an odd day. I was awake for three hours in the middle of the night, which never sets me up well for the day.

Just before noon, I delivered our daughter to the train station for her weekend trip to Chicago.  I believe the only other time I've delivered her to a train station was for her 8th-grade French-class trip to Montreal.

She and I rode lots of trains together last summer, in France.  It didn't seem quite right that she was going off on an adventure on the train and I was staying here!  No new sights/experiences/food for me, this time....  No pics of Chicago architecture, or of Millenium Park in winter.....

Nope, this time I was going to stay home and take the dog to the vet.  I walked him before taking him for his annual check up, so I could collect one of the samples they need to test.

We had had a whole week of above-freezing temps, including a couple of days in the 50s (F), and still there was this much snow.

Friday is trash day.  We wheel our garbage out in one cart, our recyclables in another, and, in the summer time, our compostables in a third.  The claim is that it's cheaper for everything to be in carts.  I am dubious, especially as citizens no longer sort the recyclables, requiring paid staff (and machines) to do so.  It is certainly the case that it is much more convenient to dump the recycs in the bin whenever I like, rather than storing up all the stuff waiting for the weather to be conducive to carrying it all out to the curb.  The bins wheel very nicely, even when heavily full -- good design on someone's part.

And I suppose the bins aren't any uglier than the batch of trash cans/bags/whatever that used to be on the curbs before.

(trying to be one with the thought that garbage bins are ok, because they indicate someone really lives here.....)

Green grass at this time of year is a sign that there has been lots of snow cover this winter.  Bare grass, exposed to winter's worst, dies and is brown.  Snow-covered grass stays live and green........


There were a lot of deep puddles on the sidewalk, so Wibbs and I wove back and forth across the street, trying to stay on the dry pavement.

Burt is 12, and I was a bit nervous that the vet might say something bad to me, though I didn't have any real concerns about him.

She said he looks great, coat looks great, teeth are fine, was surprised that he's 12, etc.

Hooray (and we'll get his hw/organ-function/fecal test results on Monday).

When I got home, I was tired.  Those three hours of sleep I missed caught up to me.  I sat and read a novel all afternoon rather than playing with pics. Or working on my volunteer work, as I should have done.......

At one point I was walking through the kitchen, and my eye was caught by this.

You have recognized this, yes?  It was freshly opened, and the sun caught all the water droplets.....

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