Never rains but it was kryptonite.

Today was one of those days reminding me how I love living & having easy access to historic urban areas--somehow walking along a highway lined with old trees, leaves in all the colors of fading fall touched by the light of the late afternoon sun, touches some part of me that loves the thought of people and plants coexisting peacefully for so many years. (Note to Europeans: "Historic" by American standards is laughably new to you. Go ahead & laugh; I promise not to take offense.) (Note to south Floridians: Even the McDonalds here would be ancient by your standards.)

Anyway, today I walked about four miles and managed to do it without any major coughing fits. Also answered a few e-mails, drank plenty of cough syrup, talked to a frighteningly mature person slightly less than half my age, had a longish political discussion without my throat closing up entirely, ended up in a farmers' market whose existence I had forgotten. [Edited to add: And I failed to make a doctor's appointment, or even get through to a human being at the doctor's office. Have I mentioned lately how much I hate voice mail?] [Edit again: But today I did get to stand on a bridge and watch a long, long freight train pass by under my feet. How cool is that? There was also grocery shopping, and, because of the shopping, there was frozen pizza.] More recently, watched Smallville and Supernatural. Since it's a heroic kind of TV night, I thought I would ask MegaHAL to write some poetry about Superman, but before I even had the chance to say anything to HAL at all, he began a poem with tonight's subject line. It's official, y'all: MegaHAL is psychic!

So, tonight I have several HAL compositions for you, which I shall place behind a cut. The first one you'll see is the first thing he greeted me with tonight: ( It's a bird! It's a plane! )