in this part of texas it's about ten degrees, with fifteen mile-an-hour winds, so it's pretty cold for people out here and roads are fairly empty. it's nothing like up north, of course, where it's snowing hard and very cold, and schools are being cancelled in a wide swath of places, but now i can sit here and read my friends' facebook posts about cancellations. the biggest frustration of course is when someone's daycare is organized, for example, and cancels monday's daycare on friday, because they know the storm is coming in on sunday, and they're so sure predictions will be accurate; then, their workplace, for example, waits until sunday night. so they lose a whole weekend wondering.

as for us, it's vacation anyway until tuesday, for everyone, so i went out on my long walk tonight, and went around the park five times as usual. the bitter wind hit me on two sides but was ok on the other two. i could hear geese - the playas that they use are a mile or two away, and they're quite confused. this is as far south as they go, there's no water further south, and usually it's warm enough; these playas don't generally freeze thought they might. they were arguing or calling each other loudly. i could hear them, because there was so little traffic on flint; flint goes to the university, so it's pretty quiet this time of year, and that's nice. no ambulances, no medivac helicopters, and a sky full of stars. but the geese are out there, arguing about whether the playa will freeze, and what to do if it does.

i get less done when everyone is around, and i'm not going into work, but that's ok, because after all, it's break, and i need to kick back and think how thoroughly sick of work i am, and how i need another direction, maybe. i've been writing poetry a lot, but running out of patience for going over it with a fine-tooth comb and making the entire collection, which was my original goal. tonight i was thinking alaska, but also hawaii for some reason. hawaii is the tough one; after all, i've never been there, don't quite know how it feels. the good thing is, these days, you can get all over the internet, and figure out how it feels. but that's not quite enough for me. hawaii and north dakota have always been hard for me, on account of never having been there.

would work on the proverbial novel, but i'm not sure i can pull it together with the hour or so i get to myself each day, these days. might try though; vacation is what, another week, for me, whereas the boys go back to school on tuesday. there might be a window in there, to at least get started. then, really, the big project is to pull together the autobiography, much of which appears on these very posts, and get it out for a big contest...more about this later, if it happens. for now, it's cold & i'm going to bed.