The front hallway of my building smells like old cigarettes (from my downstairs neighbor) and, in winter, wet wool. This is rather like what my mom's house used to smell like when she took up smoking again when I was 13. It's an odd set of smells to feel at home around, but I do.

Seasonal synesthesia

Even the word "December" is airy and light. Cold, but clear-headed. If somber, than musingly so. A seriousness in which you discover things the snow (snow!) has buried.

My apartment is 50 degrees right now because I hate calling my landlord more than I hate being cold. Cold is an excuse to hide in bed with a book/cat/cup of tea, so it's actually pretty great. Actually.

Welcome home forever once again.

Spring's not technically here, but I always think it starts with March anyway. Even if it snows again, it's going to be feeble halfhearted snow that melts quickly and featherdusts the bones but doesn't get down deep. If you stand outside at midday, you can hear the trickle of little melts springing up like leaks in the belly of a barge. Winter's funereal barge. The unspoken promise is mud, and the smell of autumn's dead things finally decaying. Old grass, old leaves getting out of the way. The sharp edges of the air smooth out, fill up with smell and sound and color. Precipitation speeds up, is fuller and faster and wetter and scrubs at dirt instead of covering it up. Things happen, we lurch out of a stillness we may not have even noticed. The word that's overused is "quickening."

I came back from South Africa mid-march last year. I landed in the Twin Cities on a day when winter was fighting hard for a comeback, and then decided to hang out for a few days with my friend who lived there. That was terrible, a legitimate bitter cold. Coming from a summer hemisphere, I had no proper jacket, and spent a lot of time in a borrowed hoodie worrying about losing my fingers. But the sun was so bright that it didn't really matter, and the buds on the trees flashed their neon every whichaway.

* My internet is out at home. My dislike of calling Charter Communications and also staying home from work to wait for technicians is, so far, vastly greater than my dislike of internetlessness. And occasionally there's a roving wireless source that flickers on long enough for me to check my Gmail or post a pre-written blog post.

* I went running last night and had one of those fabulous upheavals on a slick-fine layer of new snow, where your feet literally fly out from under you on little wings and your arms flap flap and an oncoming car that appeared at Just The Moment Of Glory may or may not have doubled back to see if you're okay. I thought I had acquired a concussion but no, not even a bruise, except for my elbow.

* No one had better say anything about Lost until I have Internet again.

Freezing fog

This weekend was foggy, then freezing foggy in southwestern Wisconsin.

Some pictures I wish I'd taken myself.

Even the crackle of salt in the road doing its dirty melt work is amazing.