[continued from previous entry]
Friday morning at 7 a.m.: -8°. Chilly. I know because I was out in it, bright and far too early. At the gym during the afternoon, the condensation that collects on the inside sill of certain double-paned windows lay frozen solid.
Yesterday around the same time: 10°. By early afternoon, the temperature had floated up into the low 50s, sunshine pouring down, the air feeling positively springlike. Warm enough to compact the snow to the point that I could walk just about anywhere my little heart desired without sinking in, making deep boots or snowshoes temporarily obsolete.
I sat out on the kitchen stoop for a while, soaking up sunlight and freakishly unseasonable warmth, so much snowmelt pouring through the downspout at the near end of the house that it sounded like the hill had sprouted a brook or stream, swollen with post-rainfall water. A kind of sound I've never heard here before.
Seven days earlier, I'd been in Montreal, watching the day grow slowly light, sparse Saturday morning traffic moving slowly amid windblown snow, headlights shining through the gray.
I watched from my tenth floor room, enjoying the show, wading out into it late morning for what turned out to be a huge, excellent breakfast at a busy local joint (Eggspectations) where I hoovered down the best cup of espresso I've tasted since returning from Madrid. I also witnessed my first bona fide vat of freshly squeezed orange juice, one counterperson filling several pitchers from it, an indication of the volume of food/drink the place cranks out.
By the time I found myself standing out on the avenue in front of the hotel waiting for a bus, midafternoon had arrived, the snowfall had begun to ease up. A bus appeared in the distance, moving steadily, smoothly in my direction, through traffic and snow, riding the city street with the serene air of a sizeable ocean-going vessel, unconcerned with the smaller craft moving around it. (All right, I'm stopping with the marine metaphor.)
I rode it to the end of the line, immediately transferred to a second, far more crowded bus, the passengers as multinational a group as I've seen anywhere on the planet, three or four languages being spoken around me, including English with an impressive array of accents. I exited at a stop five minutes along, made the one-block hike from there to my friend Tom's place, the local world white with new snow, fat, light flakes floating in the air like lazy, nearly incandescent confetti.
Tom and his dog, Jack, met me at the door, Jack appearing at least as happy to see me as Tom, nose sniffing at my reachable body parts, doing the euphoric, body-wriggling oh-boy-another-friendly-human thing. Tom extended a more restrained welcome.
I removed winter-weather gear, we drifted toward the kitchen. Tom flushed out his kid, Max, from his bedroom hideyhole, then briefly disappeared. Max interrogated me about having seen Brian Blessed in a fairly wild show in London, Mr. B. apparently a household idol due to his work in Black Adder.
A field trip for film and dinner had been the evening's original plan. With the change in weather (and the absence of one of Tom's progeny, off doing a horror film festival with friends), the film and dinner remained on deck, but transferred to the basement instead of somewhere out in Montreal's 'burbs. Max drifted off to devote some time to the online gaming world, cheerfully slaughtering friends and enemies, leaving Tom and I without teenage supervision for a while.
At some point, during one of far too many discussions about movies, Max and Tom decided they had to show me the highlights of a Jackie Chan film, a totally disposable movie as it turned out, except for the final 20 or so minutes, which feature a long, elaborately spectacular fight scene, as excellent as any fight scene I've seen anywhere. So good I'd consider buying the DVD just for that.
[continued in next entry]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Yesterday, afternoon giving way to evening:
España, te echo de menos.
rws 6:13 PM [+]
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