29  bar steep rise 30.04 0mph SSW dewpoint 23  Spring

             Waxing Gibbous Moon of Winds

Walked outside today, no ice on the driveway, sun in the sky.  Felt healthy and limber.  Good.  Ready to be out there.

In these caesuras between one bout of intense concentration and the next I tend to clear out my in basket.  So, I gathered beneficiary forms to complete the living trust work Kate and I did last fall.  I filled in all the upcoming dates on my calendar including Kate’s CME trip to San Francisco and her trip to Denver hoping it will be during the time of Gabriel’s birth.  Filed the property tax papers.  Things like that.

While working on the hydroponics, I remarked to Kate that I can see Asperger’s Syndrome as a magnified version of the typical male.  When I want to get something done, I like to stay with it, put my energy and focus in one place.  One aspect of Asperger’s is the tendency to become absorbed in one thing to the exclusion of others.  I get it.

I had a few days of nice compliments about my work from the China tour on Saturday to the Groveland presentation.  A friend called me a polymath and for a generalist like me that’s a high compliment.  Another, who comes from a long line of farmers, a really long line–over 4,000 years worth–liked my project for the Woolly Mammoth year.  It’s good to hear positive comments, but so easy to get sidetracked by them, too.  These days I’m much better at hearing them and saying thank you.

Time for sleep.  Good night.

40  bar rises 29.60 3mph W dewpoint 30  Spring

          Waxing Gibbous Moon of Winds

So, this guy goes out to get his newspaper and slips on the ice.  If you read my obituary early, it may start with the line, Died for His Morning Paper.  After some initial conflict in our relationship–I wanted to be in the city and Andover was stubborn about remaining in the exurbs–I have come to love our land.  All of it.  Except.  The driveway.

It slopes.  Most days in most years this is no big deal.  I drive a car up it and down it.  If it snows, I get out the snowblower and remove it.  On occasion, usually in March or April, snow melt or rain freezes on the sidewalk and on the slope of the driveway creating a downright dangerous condition.  Even more dangerous of course because I encounter it before I’m awake.  Kate often gets the newspaper, but she seems to handle the slope better, or at least, doesn’t talk about her slips. (She’s a Norwegian. Stoic.)

Case in point.  This morning.  I put on my Acorn slippers with their padded plastic soles and went out the front door, down the front steps and onto my @##!  Aside from my dignity, which I have little of in the morning anyhow, nothing serious damaged, but I did go back inside and announce that the paper would be retrieved when “conditions warranted.”

Since Kate was stuck reading Parenting magazine, one of the many free magazine subscriptions she gets just being an MD, I listened to the first few groans, smirks and cries of disbelief at the bad advice, about Parenting, of all things.  This made me head for the downstairs and the plastic bucket in which I deposited my Yak-Traks last years.

Yak-Traks are a fraidy cats dream.  They slip over your boot or tennis shoe and put coiled metal in contact with the ice rather than your slippery soul.  They worked great.  I spread salt on the bad places, got the Tribune, came inside and promptly, you guessed, had a near miss slipping on our tile floor.  Turns out the Yak-Traks create instability on solid surfaces.  Sigh.