I’m at the Grafton Alterra’s, the counter facing west, Lucero on the headphones. Cars are just activating their headlights and rain is coming but probably not for a few hours. Today was beautiful, seventies for brief stretches, but probably closer to the low-sixties near the water. I can’t get my head around today as Friday and not Saturday, but we Midwesterners take Good Friday seriously, or at least seriously enough to skip work and let the schools out early for spring break.

This morning I woke near 2:30 and decided to rise rather than lie (lay? I can never remember) in bed the last 90 minutes before I rise for the gym. I answered email and knocked out another page in the Catherine of Siena paper. The Y was empty, really, 40 minutes on the elliptical/stairmaster and crunches. After breakfast I felt myself drifting and T was restless so I loaded he and S into the car and hit the coffee shop. See pics below. We also walked halfway down the new stairs from Upper Lake Park to the beach before returning home. I read Virgina Woolf upstairs and crashed for an hour or so before rising and lifting weights to the last half hour of the Bourdain Provence episode. S and I played baseball in the back field and I talked with Mike next door about politics, pension plans, and whether or not the Brewers should sign Jermaine Dye. I made brownies from a new recipe that required me both to use chocolate syrup and boil sugar and butter together. I’m getting better. Since T’s got a friend staying over tonight I cut out to Alterra’s for a couple hours of comparative solitude. M does the same, really, with shopping and her website and all that. I need to stay up to the ungodly hour of 11PM because our dog sitter, a student, works at Barnes and Noble until ten and I really want her to meet the dogs before I leave for Louisville. Normal people stay up this late all the time! I can do it! Only three and a half more hours!

Three quick bullet points:

• I can’t stop grinding my teeth.
• My new phone is awesome. How long have these devices existed? I can check the weather, my email, hell, I can see my location on a map, all with this device.
• Poetry is coming slowly. I need extended focus and discipline to write well. I think I’m ready.

The clouds are rolling in quickly. The flags are wrapping around the poles. Have a great Friday night.