All the leaves are brown and the sky is grey.

Winter is kinda depressing, huh? I find myself trying to ride out the clock most winters, just waiting for the days of cold to be over. By the time February rolls around, I usually feel fatigued by the gloominess. This winter is unlike any other in memory however as I have changed jobs over the Winter and with that changed states, physical states, U.S. States, states of location. This wintertime has been more go-go-go than most. With a new year comes new budgets and that opens doors and just twenty-three days into the year I was taking the photo seen here when I had no idea that I would be changing cities on day one. The photo was not taken in Texas. I guess the closest parallel I can think of was moving from Austin to Dallas at the end of 1996 for a job that would start in 1997. I was twenty-two and scared and that job... well, anyways, that was a different time because it was less of an adventure. There was that New Hampshire trip five years ago too. That was an adventure, but it still wore me out. The point I am trying to make is that I am feeling unusually energized for all the lack of sun. One of the things that sucked about the New Hampshire trip was that the city (Nashua) didn't feel the need to clear sidewalks of snow, just roads, so all of the snow from the roads would just be pushed up onto where the sidewalk had been making it unusable so there was no way to walk along the roadside and enjoy the day outdoors. I guess that's normal. In St. Louis in contrast there isn't much snow. There is a different challenge in that the city clearly views sidewalks as a nice to have and not a must. There are numerous roads where the sidewalk is only on one side of the road and in those scenarios I have seen it run into a residential neighborhood and stop half a mile deep randomly in front of a house. That's good enough. We can check the checkbox for: yes, sidewalk ...Instead of finding this frustrating I am instead intrigued by the Monty Python absurdity of it all. On the fifty-second day of this year I was told by the nurse practitioner I found here to do my meds that there was too much sugar in my system and that I am prediabetic. Lame! Well, I guess I need to start turning a problem around. It did not help things today that the Olive Garden kept me waiting and then in their guilt offered me a free dessert. I elected to go with the Warm Apple Crostata seen below. That was the most interesting thing to happen today, fifty-six days in, and while that may not seem interesting at all... I'm engaged. In the wise words of Love and Rockets: "I'm alive, so alive."