A noticed date, a little time, and a quick drive down the avenue to a bar that I have never been to but seen mentioned from time to time. Then a songwriter slinging a guitar playing country music like a bonafide star, sad in her head but also her heart, and a band on fire followed her close behind.

This week’s extra day already had me fantasizing about how to either spend my lone day off Saturday or slip something fun into the middle of next week’s uncertainties. I’m hopeful the rain will dampen things in several ways after a few days’ run of sunlight, at least before next week’s storm.

I like my job, even on days when I remember that for better and much more often for worse, I’ll never run up against its limits. It’ll put me in touch with people behaving badly, cruelly, indifferently, and in return, for the most part, I have to let it register, allow the negative to show proof positive.

Got through a delightful library book, but now need to turn in a small stack checked out last month, knock out this month’s book-club selection, and bite down hard on some personal projects that will require sliding my eyes’ gaze over letters and numbers in order to obtain and derive meaning and so on.

I stuck a selfie from a year ago today, one of the first pictures from a then-new phone, next to one from this morning. Back then, I was just over halfway through the total amount I’d lose for the calendar year, and have managed to stay around that goal for nearly six months. Now, for next tricks…

A bit of flapping around against a cloudy backdrop, high over familiar lands with the beat of my wings keeping time and the certainty of a changing forecast, and then perched atop a favorite branch, looking around at what’s mine and waiting to see who might join me in before the sunlight shuffles off.

A sun-drenched solo schlep along the creekside trail, marveling at my almost unnecessary jean jacket over my t-shirt, followed by some bike pedaling time, and I suppose I shouldn’t resent the way these physical activities make me feel any more than I enjoy noticing their lingering effects on my body.

A quarter of the year done, a power washed blast of time, rain and memory drips clean off the chassis. The next weeks’ labor makes today’s stillness luxurious. Dumb videos and Duolingo drills helped distract me as I pedaled in place. Next up: overdue library books and light skepticism as discipline.

I was impatient on the way home from the broom closet. No, mapping app, I didn’t feel like the avenue the whole way back, or like crawling home on the interstate for an hour. Oh, hello, long stretch for a bit at regular traffic speed, except for you building construction lane cone-offs. Gangway, y’all.