a little break and back to the view from the back

I didn't plan to take a week-long break from here. I've been working for a while on moving my news site, GenevaLunch, from one-woman show to community service news and in the past two weeks we hit the crunch of finalizing the business plan. Last week turned out to be one of those times when there is barely time to sleep - although somehow I always manage to eat.

The business plan is now gone, in the hands of various business, legal and journalism people who will give GL's small team some feedback. For a couple days after it left I was in a daze, but work goes on and the site still needs to be fed.

By Sunday, life was nearly back to just plain busy normal, so there was time to look at the world again, make a few observations from the back of the train.

We had a little snow, then a little more. It was not weather for lunch on the balcony. But from the balcony I could wonder why we humans like to create several stages between our indoor worlds and the outdoor ones. There is a house, then a strip of veranda, then a strip of bush, and finally, the great outdoors where snow lands.

I ventured out, over damp lawn to check on the state of the pond. It is fed by a stream so doesn't freeze but I sweep it out now and again because dirt and leaves and other remnants of nature like to gently sink there. I didn't have the heart to unsettle the water, so nicely mirroring a bulky white cloud above, which had replaced the snow clouds temporarily, and a sturdy autumn flower now starched by winter.