The last couple of times I’ve swung by the old neighborhood local, I’ve heard the Bs: Black Sabbath, Beck (both Mr. Jeff and Mr. Hansen), Beastie Boys, Beatles, Belle and Sebastian, Bowie, Blue Oyster Cult, Beirut. Obvs, other artists too, but I’m blaming bacon, beverages & bonhomie for biases.

Today meant picking up some fried chicken at the spot about a mile from home, then trying our luck with a drive over two bridges instead of one to get to book club. We got where we were going early, enjoyed the change of traffic scenery, and can even expect to be billed for a minor misunderstanding.

Wet and cold enough overnight to see snow atop the local mountain, with too much cloud cover in the way as I rode into town but just enough lifted to see it clear as I drove west, having shopped for some food, gotten a vehicle repair estimate and listened to the new and excellent Algiers LP.

A half mile under vast blue emptiness, another crescent moon overhead, ominous gray warhead clouds gathering in the south and west, so I can wander drugstore aisles, score and pay for remedies, and the checkout guy can verify my license and ignore the gray poking out from my mask.

Sometimes little lights show up and beat a big one, even one you figured on spending a little time sunning yourself beside, because you’re not expecting them to hang out and remind you how they look together, or you could look next to others if you have the right setting and timing.

This place turns into the house of the winds whenever a decent cold front passes through the region, there is just something about the angle of the building, maybe the parking garage underneath or the roof overhead. Even rarer: when skies clear and the heavenly bodies line up right.

I slept poorly after writing about a three-alarm fire that heavily damaged a historic church building, so later today, I countered with: a short walk out in sunshine; dark chocolate; organic sipping chicken bone broth; a ten-mile bike ride; a chat about health with the maternal unit.

It’s always a pleasure to walk around the room and meet folks who’ve heard of you or are just now realizing you exist, and it’s also a pleasure to sit in a backyard with a friend and acknowledge that both you and they exist. Both these things were fun and I should do it more often.

Oh, hello, loud rattling noise, making yourself heard at speed along the highway this morning. We were listening to something uptempo, so we couldn’t immediately place you. But then our dealership found you, and now we wait for a body shop appointment after a holiday weekend to fix you.

A full day, with a financial thing that required some face to face consultation, a surprisingly good sandwich from a butcher shop, a decent schlep around one of the water bodies that feeds a local creek, solid views driving downhill and some flipping through magazines at a bookstore.