tar roof

I guess that at this point -- perhaps a bit earlier, the focus of the blog has shifted from allegedly primarily "academic" to now "journalistic" in that rather personal manner -- no world news tonight. In fact the world is nicely chirping right now, with a sonic backdrop of waves lapping the shoreline in front of my cabin. The candle to my left contrasts rather starkly to the bluish-white glow of the laptop screen. And to top it all, I've got a Springer Spaniel curled up at my feet -- the same Springer Spaniel that refuses to sit down on my twice-daily kayak commute across the lake (tonight he just about had me tipped, but I will say that it's good exercise for my balance and core muscles to stabilize a kayak against the top-deck wanderings of a neurotic dog). 

My little cabin is clean. The dock is in. The trees along the path between the cabin and the lake are trimmed enough to walk past without literally tasting cedar and pine. The rocking chair is on the deck, and the frog I think I mentioned the other day is still glowing. It actually worked last night to help guide me to this otherwise black spot on a black shoreline (Ooh! Is that a glowing frog? Go that way!) My guitar is tuned and I strummed a little melody that I don't have any words for, other than "Why do you say: La-la-la-la-lahh...?" (if you have any ideas, send them in).

It's far too poetic, right? I mean, this is the vision of Walden Plus.

Alright, so there's the laptop, which sort of spoils it, but hey, ya gotta get with the times, man. And I did go to a matinee today when the black flies made it unpleasant to work on re-roofing the kitchen. Thoreau would not have left his Walden for a matinee (yeah, right! I bet he spent half his time there!). At least I got the scaffolding up. If all goes as planned, I'll get myself out of bed at the first nudge of Seymour's nose tomorrow, and get half the roof de-shingled before the blackflies come out. Then get the other half done before I pass out from blood loss, then it will be noon and I'll have lunch somewhere (I picked up some Walden-friendly Chips and Salsa today after the movie) (the movie was Mr. and Mrs. Smith, which, if boiled down to its essence, and then boiled a bit more, and then given all sorts of additives, was sort of like Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, where Beatrice and Benedict are assassins. I'm sure Thoreau wrote about it too, in notes he later destroyed.

It's 9:35 and dark dark dark. Just a sliver of moon left, and only a few stars. And a glowing frog.