I'm not at work

...but I am working. Sort of.

I apparently left my key to the office at work on Thursday. I didn't realize this until Saturday, and then I forgot to go get it. This morning, as I was tugging on my extra pairs of pants for the 33° bike ride, I suddenly realized that I would have no way of getting into the office, and I would have to bike all the way back.

So I took off the two extra pairs of pants, and settled in to work from home.

I've done pretty much everything I can do from here; now I'm just logged in to catch any phone calls that might come through. Robert should be up soon; hopefully he'll get my email or head into the office within an hour or so and I can go in then. I suppose I'll drive, though I haven't really decided yet.

It's been kind of neat to be at home for the sunrise. When I first got up it was completely dark, as usual. Slowly, the sky outside the curtains got lighter and lighter. I opened the blinds in the living room and shut off the lamp. In the office, I pulled the curtain up and hooked it over the rod, then stood for a moment gazing out at the new morning. A school bus coasted past the pond, yellow lights flashing. Out in the middle of the water, I saw a duckling submerge. I watched the area where he'd gone under for a long time, and he never resurfaced. When I started to wonder whether I'd really seen him go underwater or not, suddenly he popped back up again, a few feet away. I smiled.

It's so nice here. Though we're right next to Bobby Jones Expressway, you can't hear too much of the highway noise because of the screen of trees. Right now I'm listening to quiet dappled with faint quacking. Ripples are moving lazily across the pond. The sky is frosted with flat clouds, and the trees, bent and broken from Saturday's ice, hold their barren remaining limbs up into that mix of blue and white and pale grey. On the bank, ducks flap out of the water; a few yards away, other ducks plop back in, paddling across in lines.

Sometimes it's nice to just sit back and appreciate the beauty you've been gifted with.