Night Watchman

Firewood this morning, cleaned house, two more ricks inside. Then bailed to the museum. Don't know what this storm is going to do. Talked with Glenn and Linda in St. Paul and they already have two feet of snow. Can't get caught on the ridge without 4-wheel drive. Needed at the museum, as it happens, go into my old stage-manager mode and solve a couple of minor problems. D is staff, and we talk about the next show he's curating. He leaves at 5 and the Cirque people arrive for their second show. I retreat upstairs, get my first edition, hard bound copy of Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow" out of the vault and check some references against the "GR Companion" (Steven Weisenburger), amusing myself for several hours. When the performance is over and the people all finally gone, I clean a bit, turn off the lights, and lock up. Alone with my ward. I walk through all the galleries in a red almost darkness lit only by exit lights. Quiet and slightly strange. I set myself up in the extra office, get a drink, go outside for a smoke. Rain and cooling temps. It climbed into the 40's today, and the driveway was a slick mess coming down, a thawed layer of mud over ice, tonight it starts sleeting, changing over to snow by morning, and the temps falling to single digits by tomorrow night. A monster storm, but probably mostly to the north of here. I'm in a warm place with hot and cold running water, comfortable and not anxious about mere survival. Seems like heaven to me.