A gorgeous morning in northern Vermont. Cold -- 20 degrees outside when I pulled myself out from under the covers at far too early an hour -- but gorgeous. The mercury has now cautiously made its way above freezing, enabling birds of all kinds to wrench themselves up from the grass where they'd been frozen in place, bursting into songs of relief at still being alive.
I'm getting ready to load a couple of bags into my car and tool down to Cambridge/Boston where I'll do some errands before heading to Logan Airport for that flight back to Madrid. Now, if you're like everyone to whom I've mentioned the fact that I'm heading back to Madrid today, you may be asking yourself the question, "Huh?" I've been asking myself the same thing -- considering I just left Madrid 3-1/2 weeks ago -- and will probably continue asking it all the way through a transatlantic night of little sleep, through a bleary-eyed, early morning stopover in Heathrow, then through the final 2-1/2 hour jog to Madrid from London. And when I step off the plane into Madrid'd sunshine and 70-something temperature, the question will vanish, going wherever it is irrelevant questions go when they evaporate in warm Spanish sunlight.
It'll be interesting to go from sleeping in a house in a location that's as quiet as a person could possibly want to a piso in the middle of a barrio in which people stay out all night partying, letting everyone within earshot know about it until the sun rises and they begin stumbling home to recover from a full night of self-destruction.
Right. Time to stop babbling and pull myself together. There's a car to be loaded and last minute things to be bumbled through.
I'll be back online tomorrow. Madrid here I come.
[Author's note, 11/22/05 -- Re: the reasoning behind this sudden trip back to Madrid: I think I told myself I was returning to retrieve belongings, cart them back across the ocean to Vermont. A pitifully transparent excuse, really, to drag my sad (though adorable) butt briefly back to a place I suspected I would be missing.
Springtime v. late winter. People/activity/street life v. quiet northern Vermont hills still receiving the occasional snowfall. And, as the final paragraph of the previous entry mentioned, I'd been feeling swamped by life. Couple all that with cheap airfares and the question of whether to go or not involved no deliberation, just a fast, flailing grab at a credit card followed by a flight reservation.]