let us lay in the sun and count every beautiful thing we can see

I was supposed to work on job applications today, but honestly... who could bear to chain themselves to a computer on a warm, sunny day? I certainly couldn't, so I hopped in my little green car and zipped down the Lake Ontario Parkway to Route 18, then the Robert Moses Parkway to Niagara Falls. It's only about a 90 minute drive from door-to-door which, while not insubstantial, is completely doable for a half-day trip.

April is early enough in the season that the area isn't mobbed by tourists, so I didn't have to jockey for position at the popular lookout points. There were still substantial ice floes (you can see a mini-glacier at the bottom of the photo to the right), but thanks to the melting water the rapids were quite impressive. Walking along the gorge, there were a number of random cold spots where the air was 10 to 15 degrees cooler; it was like walking into air conditioning. Very bizarre. I considered zipping over to Canada for an hour at the casino, but decided that it wasn't worth spending the time waiting to cross the border. Anyway, I hadn't been to the falls in probably 5 years or more, so it was a wonderful outing. They really are 'one of those things' that simply aren't done justice by photographs (and certainly not by mine!) but there are some up on my Flickr anyway.

Even after a lengthy walk and drive, I was back home by mid-afternoon. I made a quick sweep of the grocery store and read a little of The Time Traveler's Wife. J had recommended this book to me a while ago, so when I was asked for suggestions for the next book club this one popped to mind. I'll be interested to hear what everyone thinks. I'm enjoying it so far--very much so, in fact--although I am only about 50 pages in. On deck are Black Swan Green (another J recommendation) and yet another Jeeves book (natch).

I watched "Marie Antoinette" last night, which was just OK. The soundtrack was great, though, and "Kings of the Wild Frontier" very well-placed. Yummy!

Was there something else I was going to mention in here? I can't remember. Oh well, I'll leave you with some things that make me happy right now:

*Sleeping with the windows open!
*Twining's blackcurrent black tea
*My new digital camera is so much better than my old one
*Thoughts of eating avocado- and hashbrown-laced breakfast sandwiches with J at Fred 62
*Rediscovering how good Clinique's face lotion is
*"Fidelity" by Regina Spektor
*The sun