Today I am writing a legal encylopedia article on implied contracts for Corpus Juris Secundum.

While searching the legal database online, I check the weather. An "action for money had and received" is favored by the courts. At 11 a.m. the temperature at the airport is 18 F.

The office window a foot from my chair breaths cold at my back. It is far too cold for March in Pennsylvania. I type out case citations, trying to determine whether "quantum meruit" is a viable form of action under the Civil Code of Louisiana. It is surely warmer in Louisiana.

My eyes burn. I look away from the legal phrases on the screen. I can make out a line of bird tracks in the fresh snow on the sun porch roof, leading straight up to the window. The tracks are perfectly defined, undisturbed as of yet by the wind. The bird must have stood there only a moment before, no more than an arm's length away.

Midway between the natural world outside my window and the manmade world on my computer monitor, I sit -- shivering and bored.