a day in the sun

Which made me think a day in the sun was all I needed to start feeling more like myself and less like a weepy, perpetually-verging-on-sickness, chronically exhausted, self-medicating-with-sugar total loon. And it’s not like it was actually warm today – it was just sunny and not snowing. And sunny. And did I mention it wasn’t snowing? For like, five minutes?? It was SO exciting! No, it actually was a really pleasant day. It may have even hit 50 today. We went to Blowing Rock and walked around, and I saw the first crocus!!! And even took a picture of it, although it wasn’t a good picture at all so I’m not posting it. It was mostly dirt with a little bit of purple in the center. Still, that was thrilling too. As was just knowing it’s not February anymore.

Then after we went to Blowing Rock and walked around, I decided to take a Picture Expedition. So I went to the Cone Manor and walked around a little bit on the carriage trails. However, the ground was mushy and icky and the icy wind kept blowing and making  me cold. So I started to drive up the parkway, thinking I’d just stop at overlooks and practice with the SLR. But the Parkway was blocked right past the Cone Manor. Which I found very annoying until I realized that if it was blocked there, it was almost certainly blocked at the Viaduct, and if it’s blocked at the Viaduct that’s quite thrilling because it means you can walk across it! I never did get to do that last year, and I’m not too sure I did it the year before last either. It’s kind of hard to catch it when it’s blocked off. They only block it off when the weather’s bad, and if the weather’s bad you probably don’t want to try driving up there. If you’re scaredy-cats like we are, at least. So you have to catch it when the weather has been bad, but it’s not bad any longer, yet they still haven’t opened the road back up. I’m surprised it wasn’t open today – there was snow on the sides of the road, but none at all on the road itself.

So I ended up having this really nice long hike, walking about six miles total, and taking ten gazillion pictures. All with Mr. Happy Sun shining down on me. I felt like it was the first time I’d been outside in decades. It was really really nice.

If my pictures ever finish loading up, I’ll post some. I’m not complaining – at least I can do it from home now. Thank you, DSL!

And then we topped the night off by watching The Darjeeling Limited, which I have been dying to see since I first read a review of it ages ago.

I loved The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic, which were Wes Anderson films also. (And as a sidenote, I’m just reading up on Wes Anderson and see that he was heavily influenced by JD Salinger. No wonder I like him so much. In fact the Royal Tenenbaums was modeled on the Glass family – which explains why I absolutely love that movie – I adore the bizarre dysfunctional Glass family!)  Anyhow, I’d been looking forward to The Darjeeling Limited for ages. And I wasn’t disappointed. As usual with the movies I love, if you don’t care for odd meandering movies that don’t have much of a plot and not a whole lot happens, you may not like it. But it’s got fantastic visual imagery and is very funny and touching. At the same time that it’s being bizarre and offbeat. It’s about three brothers who haven’t spoken to one another in a year, but are taking a train through India as a spiritual journey to come to terms with their father’s death and their mother’s running off to a nunnery and their relationships with each other. My only complaint was I think it needed to be longer.

Well, it is, of course, after two in the morning. SO I need to get off the computer. I’ll leave you with pictures of my lovely walk on the viaduct — in the SUN!!!