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Thursday, October 31, 2002 Man, yesterday turned out to be one of those days that develop an agenda and momentum of their own, so that all you can do is hang on and try to get through the ride with a bit of dignity. There's a huge amount of stuff going on in my 3D existence -- preparing the house and grounds for the looming winter, dealing with prep. for my return to Madrid (only a month away now), dealing with something sudden that came up with the IRS. That last is due to an error by a life insurance company post-my-mother's death two and a half years ago and will work out just fine. It's just necessitated some hours spent going through records, preparing correspondence, blahblahblah. Added to all that is the simple flow of things that must be done as part of living a life. And in the middle of all that I'm trying to finish up the last few pages of a novel, which will feel mighty fine to have done when it finally is. None of this is bad. On the contrary -- it's all good. I have a life, it's full of activity/input/great experiences. It's good to be alive and immersed in one's existence. It's good to have a life. I'm sharply aware of the coming return to Madrid and have slowly been upping the use of Spanish in my life, recently managing to connect with a small group of local folk who also speak the language to one degree or another. We've begun meeting once a week at a Montpelier Thai restaurant whose management is tolerant of a bunch of weirdos hanging around spouting a language the help doesn't understand while ordering minimal chow. (Actually, I seem to be the only one who eats -- the rest stick to a token bit of liquid refreshment.) They stick us at a table in the back, away from customers who might be distracted by foreign-language conversation, we blather happily. Or at least that's the theory. It worked okay last week at the first get-together. Yesterday was the second. I arrived at the appointed hour like a good boy, sat myself at our table, ordered some fine Thai food. And I waited. At a quarter after five, one of the others showed up, and that was the extent of the turnout. Which turned out to be just fine as I got to talk a lot, so that by the end I was comfortably into the sound and rhythm. Heading back out into the cold, dark American-English speaking world was a bit of a jolt. And it surely is cold here these days. Cold and increasingly dark, evening falling earlier with each passing day. When I pull myself out of bed in the mornings, the temperature hovers in the mid-teens, the ground is white with frost. Madrid will be cold, too, but it's not the professional kind of cold winter brings to northern Vermont. It's more of a dilettante's version of cold weather, with the occasional spell of genuinely frigid temperatures. Come February, winter slowly begins giving way to spring. It's mighty civilized and makes the glacial tendencies of the northern Vermont climate seem less user-friendly. Meanwhile, it's Halloween! A bowl of Reese's sticks waits by the kitchen door on the off chance some costumed munchkins will show up later on looking for hand-outs. The lack of neighbors here makes that unlikely, but you never know. I'm prepared, we'll see what the day brings. Right. On to the morning. rws 9:59 AM [+]
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