Okay, not really. I'm sitting down by the river, working outdoors on these beautiful post-Irene days. One thing you can say for a hurricane over a blizzard, clean-up days are lovelier.

The river's still full -- it's just past high tide now, and the piling fields are pretty much covered. All the water the storm dumped upstate is still flowing down and then being pushed back up when the river turns around, because the harbor and the bay are holding about as much as they can, too. But it'll all even out over the next couple of days. The birds are chowing down - don't know about individuals, of course, but as far as species, the ducks (Gadwalls and mallards), gulls (herrings and blackbacks), sparrows, grackles, starlings, pigeons, barn swallows, cormorants, mockingbirds, robins and cardinals are all accounted for. The gulls seem to be enjoying all the debris floating up and down the river. They're riding around on it. And yesterday a peregrine falcon landed on a lamppost right in front of me, glared around, rearranged his wings and flew off again with a rat in his talons. So here's a question. How could he land on something and sit there with a rat in his talons? Doesn't he need his talons to hold on to the lamppost?