Just one of those days

In a rare turnabout, the starlings scooped the mapgies this morning, arriving at the Bird Park early and vacuuming up all the peanut shards before the tuxedo wearing dandies arrived. And it's raining. Looks like Oregon outside with an extra light filter thrown on for ambiance. That's Nevada for you. Like Greece, we got light.

In other local news, I am now officially in training for an upcoming trek through a bit of Central America, I say trek because this time, unlike driving through Mexico in a jeep filled_crammed_bulging with all the things I think I need to leave the house on any given day... laptop, drawing tablets, pens, pencils, camera, books, shoes, boots, various changes of clothes, hats, bottles of water, food, this time we are only taking what we can stuff into backpacks and, once we get there, riding the bus.

I have always admired the people who traipse through countries with backpacks, staying out for years at time, living in hostels and being very interesting and rumpled, meeting up with friends here and there they met here and there, swapping road stories and travel tips over carafes of wine and whatever other exotics go round the circle. We will not guzzling carafes of wine or anything else for that matter or staying out for years, but, like a lot of people, we will be going to language school, Spanish immersion in Antigua, for as long as we can stand it, two weeks, maybe three, maybe more, we'll see, four hours a morning with a one half hour break. Good for the brain. When we get sick of that, we'll hop a bus and travel a bit. But it's the backpack part that I am focused on and must prepare myself for. I claim that the only reason I take a lot of stuff with me wherever I go is because hey, the vehicle is going there anyway so why not, but that at heart I am like the swift wolf who travels light. I claim that. I have two months to prepare myself.

In the course of writing this, the rain has turned to snow, thus ending our February false spring.