Cold cold cold on the river today, boys and girls. Gray water jumping in sharp chop in front of a north wind. Bright sun, but no help from that. I'll need to dig out the thick sweater, down vest, flannel-lined jeans (love those flannel-lined jeans!) to keep up my first-cup-of-tea-by-the-river routine. Even the huge black-back gull who weeks ago staked out the tallest piling, from which he surveys his empire and chases away all the herring gulls and terns (though he doesn't seem to mind the cormorants, who perch companionably on the surrounding pilings -- but always lower than he) was hunkered down into the wind. I gulped that tea and fled. Come back inside, turn the computer on, and find out it's 28 degrees out there! No wonder I'm freezing! Must now go stuff neoprene in the window gaps. In this building, our windows are rectangles but our window openings are rhomboids. It's an old building, and it's settled, okay? Someday we'll replace the windows. Meanwhile, I'm delighted my new computer shipped well padded in neoprene.