Sunday at the park with Bruiser.

Yesterday was a full day. We woke up to read the piles of newsprint on our porch (summation: everything is bad and stupid), then decided to take Bruiser to the dog park because it was cold, and therefore the park was less likely to be sloppy with mud, and because it had snowed the night before, and Bruiser digs the snow.

The morning was bright. Bruiser alternated between running like the wind in his prance-y, I'm-glad-to-be-a-dog style, and getting into it with other dogs--play-fighting, etc. Here he is with some running companions (he's the handsome one in the middle)--

After the successful dog-park outing, we had important work to do back at home. I had to make weekly contact with Scotland, and had a serious chat with Miriam. And, since my writing group was meeting in the afternoon, I had a poem to write. Which I did, instant messaging with Dr. Write while assembling some notes for a poem that turned out to need more baking, as it were. As in, it was really more a pile of notes than a poem. That meant that I had to scour the "new ms" file for a poem that was closer to being a poem. Which I found--a poem that was once a pile of notes that I had, at some point, turned into a rather vague villanelle. Back when I turned the pile of notes into the villanelle, I remember thinking, well, that was good practice, but also, whew! kind of crappy! But yesterday, with the cooling power of several months' neglect, I was able to see the possibilities, and it actually is coming along. I'll post it, in progress, on my website sometime soon, if you want to check it out.

Finally, last night we went up to Libby Gardner Hall to hear my son's choir, along with the other University choirs and the University philharmonic, play an intense and stunning performance of Mozart's Requiem. I have loved this piece for a long time but never had heard it live. It was like hearing Mozart's passionate and terrifying argument with God, and it was gorgeous, thrilling. I'm only sorry that I didn't call all my friends and relatives to tell them to come. Very, very sorry, friends and relatives.