My throat is still sore, so posts will again be a little light today. Follow my lead and take the day off too if you can – simmer some soup, put on some tea, and grab a book. I’m going to spend some time navigating a new phone, and possibly focusing on my Twitter and Instagram feeds. Think of this as a Cross-Promotional-Synergistic pollination project. There’s FaceBook too, though to be honest all social media is getting tiresome. I include this website in that too. Give me a couple of days to recuperate and find the muse again.

A bright brutally-cold day was greeted with a very sore throat and a lost voice.

This will be a quiet day, in every way.

I’m too pooped to write much, and I can barely speak.

Enjoy this brief respite.

I shall return, and I shall be millions.

Until then, have a cup of tea.

I like a dose of happy in the middle of the day. Usually I find it on a lunch-time walk, a welcome bit of solitude, preferably in decent temperatures. Here’s a story on a very friendly quokka from Australia. Still don’t know what a quokka is, other than a pile of cute.

Waking up with a throat on fire, and a new regime of physical therapy exercises to be executed every three hours, I found myself feeling all of my forty-one years, and then some. The exercises required warming my back first with a heating pad (hello 90) and the sore throat required some popsicles (hello 5). Somewhere in between them was the height of my middle age. We are here, for better or worse.

I’ve felt like an old soul since I was a little kid, yet the older I get, the younger I feel – mentally that is. Physically I feel the years, the decades. They show in my hair, my laugh lines, the furrow in my brow that doesn’t quite melt away the same way it once did. Aging doesn’t bother me, but the way the body begins its slow decline does. I’m coming around to the fact that no one is immune, and that I may need to modify what I eat and how I exercise, and take steps to improve both if I’m to have a full life. That’s a sobering thought, but one perfectly in line when you’re about halfway between 5 and 90.

This would be another dream of mine, though in the original version it was a church that I’d renovate and move into, with Gothic architecture, soaring ceilings, and a few rows of uncomfortable but impressive pews. Check out the amazing work that one person did on this former cement factory in Barcelona, and marvel at how beauty can come from ruin.

I love stories like this.

As thanks for Andy watching over their home in the winter, our snowbird neighbors sent this very thoughtful gift to us around Valentine’s Day. It’s a box of chocolates from the Harbor Candy Shop in our favorite place: Ogunquit, Maine. A wonderful reminder of that magical spot, and a lovely gesture from two people we are lucky to have as neighbors.

Memories of Ogunquit are always happy, and having just received word of this season’s offerings at the Ogunquit Playhouse it’s been on my mind of late. We won’t be there for a few months, so this gift was a perfectly-timed bridge to see us through to then. Good neighbors send good chocolate!

Hope is in the air. We’ve had our 70-degree tease of spring, and though there are several weeks to go before we officially move out of winter, I sense a light at the end of the tunnel. This is my favorite part of anything anyway: the anticipation. Spring holds the bright possibility of being perfect, or at least better than last year. It’s an annual wish, and one that I’m always happy to make.

If you envision it, somehow it will manifest itself.

I’m in no rush, and neither is winter. We haven’t seen the last of the snow or ice or wind. We’ve still got a ways to go. Who knows how lion-like our entry into March will be, but we’re on the right track, baby.

Until then, the prettiness of life in a northern town.

It changes around this time of the year.

It slants differently across the snow.

Richer and more robust than in the gray of December.

It holds promise in this new stance.

The last light of February is upon us.

One day more.

We are gearing up for going in the next month like a lion, but there are a few more days of the shortest month of the year left to be had, so let’s recap the last bit of February here (and recuperate from the Academy Award mayhem).

Pink goes good with green.

A cocktail that leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

The magic lives.

A moment of peace.

Joe Jonas in his underwear again.

Scallions & parsley.

A pretty little cycle.

The enchanting ‘Lily & the Octopus’ by Steven Rowley.

Fantasizing.

My brother’s 40th birthday. Now we are old.

Ice ice baby.

Andy on the radio.

A smorgasbord of Hunks.

Other February Hunks included Joe Putignano, Josh Ohl, Jonathan Guijarro & Tom Frelinghuysen.