Woweee!

76 degrees at quitting time today! Beautiful sunshine with an unheard of cloudless sky, all day long. Today was exquisite... just perfect... and now we're hearing the birds really go at it! Ah! I love the cool spring air: everything fresh and green, cherry blossoms popping out everywhere before the hardwoods get their leaves; and the little girls are practicing softball again at 132nd square park, on the way home from work. It reminds me of all those Little League evening practices more than a decade ago.

Here in the Seattle area, we've been blanketed by clouds and rain (and snow!) for much longer than normal... it seemed that winter lasted forever... It's like I just woke up today and found out I was alive. Ah! It's almost like I forgot what the color blue looked like. And it made me happy!

Another letter from my brother! And I wrote him today too... our letters are crossing in the mail.

Tonight, after dinner, I put on my new biking pants and jumped in my car to go enjoy the last few moments of perfect weather. I biked for an hour, going 12 and a half miles round-trip on the Sammamish River Trail. The crickets were singing their guts out, the Canadian geese honked as they flew in for landings, all sorts of varieties of birds chirped and a wild bunny scampered across the path in front of me on my way back, getting out of the way just in time. Just a mile into the ride, I saw what I thought was a duck swimming in the river. But I realized it couldn't be, since there wasn't anything where the duck's head should be. It turned out to be a river otter, swimming briskly upstream! But my favorite encounter of the evening was the bald eagle, perched high on a young, bare tree, just on the river's edge. Lord, I love Willows Valley! What a beautiful place! As I returned, it was getting dark. The sun had gone over the west ridge, but the sky was still a deep, bright blue, and it reflected brilliantly off of the glassy surface of the water, accenting the crisp images of bare trees painted on the river.

I am in love with this place.

I returned right at 9 o'clock, and in order to completely avoid an episode of 24, my sister and I watched two episodes of MASH downstairs. What a day!

Jp