Oot and Aboot

Today was Slack Day so I slept in, then only did the dishes and worked on the comic for most of the afternoon. When 6:30 rolled around, I did my usual pre-exercise stretches, dosed myself with Albuterol, ate a rubbery chunk of cold congealed oatmeal from the fridge (it was good, really) and took the Captain for a bike run in the bracing 20*f winds.

During the winter months, the sky is dark for most of my usual day. If my occasionally perverse sleep schedule sees fit to flip on me, I may not see the sun for a week or more. This is bad for biological/depression reasons, but I do love it. Especially when it snows (as it has for several days in a row, though nothing stuck for too long) and the clouds hang down low and take on the color of a bruise, and the snow turns blue and dim. You could walk through the woods without a flashlight on a night like that. Absolutely wonderful. On days when it's clear out and you can see stars during regular business hours, it never fails to remind me of the Night World levels of the original Super Mario Bros game. I even call it that, in my head. It feels more private and safe than summer nights when the sun stays up forever.

Meanwhile, our bike run was going pretty well. The Captain was exasperated with my slow pace and started pulling me pretty hard via his harness. The easier to tire you out, my dear. We rode a little more than two miles total, and on the way back I offered him a choice between "go home, get some dinner" and "dog park." His response was to drag me to the dog park at top speed. I could barely get him to stop at the busy cross-street.

The flooded parking lot area around the dog park had frozen over. The ice shattered all around us as we plowed through. I wince sometimes to think of the Captain's poor chilly toes when he plows through freezing water, but it's in his blood. It's the summer heat he doesn't like.

Inside the park, the Captain ran gleeful circles around me as I jogged around the dog park. I didn't have much endurance after years of refusing to run because of THE BOUNCE, but I was able to wear us both out. We can work on stamina later. My asthma did kick in after a while, but it's been a mild attack so far. Nothing like I would have had two years ago, that's for certain.

At one point I saw something incredibly bright moving over the park, and stopped running to look up at the most vivid shooting star I've ever seen. At first I thought it must be an airplane because it didn't burn out like the ones I usually see on clearer nights. It just fell forever in slow-motion toward the trees. I saw two tiny sparks shoot off from the main meteorite as the whole thing suddenly flared brighter, and then it was behind the trees and out of my line of sight. It was incredible.

Five minutes later, I saw something huge and dark gliding in slow circles overhead. It looked like a bird of prey, and it was enormous. It had to have had a five-foot wingspan at least. As I watched it, the bird vanished I couldn't find it again.

After this, we rode home and I took a hot shower, followed by an even hotter bath, followed by sabotage via freezing cold blasts of water from the faucet just to help spur me onto my feet again. Now I'm warm and comfy in my fluffy bathrobe and the Captain is snoring with his head hanging over the arm of Best Chair.

I feel utterly at peace with the world. The only thing that could make this better would be a hot plate of lo-mein and the latest episode of One Piece.

Speaking of which...