On the trail to something interesting, something new...

Sometimes you just can't help but wonder why certain things happen to you. Why?

This morning was one of those moments. I woke up early and there wasn't as much to do as normal. I'd already cleaned the kitchen up and I didn't need lunch for today, so it was just down to breakfast and getting ready. I stood by the porch door and looked outside to inspect the sky for signs of leakage and was drawn to sudden movements that I was seeing in the bottom right of my field of vision. I saw a squirrel zipping across the porch with its mouth filled with freshly bitten branches and leaves, back and forth and disappearing. I stood and watched it for a while and realized that it was not only zipping back and forth, but by the "back" part of the journey, it had an empty mouth that wasn't tightly clenching foliage. I stood quietly and began hearing major rustling in the walls of my apartment over by Shenan's old room, and I groaned. Why?

I got ready for work, headed down the front steps and there, standing up and staring at me brazenly, was the squirrel in all its muscular glory, on the front rails with newspapers in its mouth and clutched in a bundle within its forelegs. We stood and looked at each other for about 45 seconds and then it leaped for the tree and reminded me of a spy in those action films who holds the gun and backs up saying, "I am going to count to 10 and if you come any closer, I'll shoot!" So backed up the squirrel onto the tree as it moved in sleek interludes between abrupt leaps up the tree, to the third floor branches of the tree in front of the apartment building, across the ledge under the windows, and there - it disappeared into the ledge/my apartment.

I stood as a few drops of rain started to come down, looked up and said aloud something quite disgruntled followed by: "are you kidding me? you have GOT to be kidding me."

After the mouse/mice of last week, a squirrel, and potential squirrel babies (nest-forming...) is almost just too surreal to believe.

So yes, extraordinary circumstances...didn't I ever try to convince you that nothing too interesting happens?

On occasion, its the kind of circumstance that merits the proverbial groan due to personal stupidity, the angry "Fates", or plain bad luck. Other times, its just the bizarre collection of things that literally flaunt themselves in front of you, seemingly whispering, "hey, look at me! over here! yes, you. I'm talking to you over there with the ipod dangling from one ear and the cell phone cradled over the other, walking to work."

Today as I was walking home from work, I was just thinking about all the unusual things I've seen this summer as I've walked to or from work. There have definitely been quite a few. Perhaps people may have noticed the same things or types of things on their own daily journeys, and been too occupied to care, and perhaps this entry is but a statement of the nothingness (or constant buzz of the same surroundings that I see twice a day) that occupies my mind going from one place to the other. In any case, I was inspired to make some record of the things I've seen

On the Way to Work.

- an entire lobster head
- 4 bright red footprints, a surgical glove, and a bitten into king-size Hershey's bar all within 3 sidewalk blocks.
- half an entire pizza
- a corn-less cob
- a Google Map team on Commonwealth Ave sending images to California. Who knows? Maybe I'm on tape.
- a gentleman fully dressed in a suit and hat standing over the bridge and relieving himself.
- a tiny dog with skinny legs hobbling on a leash - one of its stick legs was entirely in a pink cast.
- what appeared to me as...a geisha. She was slightly older, standing just off of Park Drive and surprised me . She was clearly of Asian descent, was wearing Japanese robe, was smoking a cigarette in a doorway, and was wearing a whole lot of makeup for it being 8:30 am and being in her robe.
- baby geese. I'd only really seen baby ducklings around.

(more will be added...)