Well hello. I am just returned from my break and the temperature is dropping. Walking outside I was met with a shock of cold winter air. Lovely loveliness.

Earlier today Claribel got my phone number so that she could call me early in the morning tomorrow if we are closed. Oh I love the first snow. Or the first freezing rain. I love snow days. Of course, we all do.

Last night I worked late. I love working late in the dark when everyone else has gone home. I feel like Claudia in From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. I feel like my own secret self.

It was very peaceful and quiet. I wondered why it was that places are so much lovelier when one is alone. How commonplace and stupid it would be if I had a friend now, sitting beside me, someone I had known at school, who would say �By-the-way, I saw old Hilda the other day. You remember her, the one who was so good at tennis. She�s married, with two children.� And the bluebells beside us unnoticed, and the pigeons overhead unheard. I did not want anyone with me.

���..

All I remember is the feel of the leather seats, the texture of the map upon my knee, its frayed edges, its worn seams, and how one day, looking at the clock, I thought to myself, �This moment now, at twenty past eleven, this must never be lost,� and I shut my eyes to make the experience more lasting. When I opened my eyes we were by a bend in the road, and a peasant girl in a black shawl waved to us; I can see her now, her dusty skirt, her gleaming friendly smile, and in a second we ahd passed the bend and could see her no more. Already she belonged to the past, she was only a memory.

I wanted to go back again, to recapture the moment that had gone, and then it came to me that if we did it would not be the same, even the sun would be changed in the sky, casting another shadow, and the peasant girl would trudge past us along the road in a different way, not waving this time, perhaps not even seeing us. There was something chilling in the thought, something a little melancholoy, and looking at the clock I saw that five more minutes had gone by.

That�s from the book I�m reading instead of doing my work. I am all anticipatory and happy now. The sad parts are all forgotten.