Exhaustion is setting in.

Took a long walk today down to the Jefferson Expansion Memorial Park. I wanted to walk among some trees. While heavily used by human beings, but it’s home to something of an ecosystem.

As I walked past one grove of trees, a male Red-Winged Blackbird dove at me. I heard the flutter of angry wings as he pulled up about six inches from my hat, then saw him out of the corner of my eye. Clearly, I was too close to a nest, so I left quickly. The artificial pond had duck weed growing on it, and Barn Swallows swooping over it. As I got closer, I could see hundreds of water striders on the surface of the water.

All this relieved some exhaustion.

*****

Had coffee with CK and her partner L this afternoon. It was fun to meet CK and L in person, after reading CK’s excellent scholarly blog. Of course, after a while CK and I started talking philosophy of religion. CK and I started discussing CK’s interesting questions about the commensurability of major world religious traditions. L’s eyes started glazing over.

Fortunately, just then Peacebang came along, and sat down to join us. Peacebang and I want to convince CK and L to move to Boston (Peacebang, too, lives south of Boston). Peacebang and I decided that CK will do her doctoral work at Boston University, and L will continue her work in neurology at one of the Boston hospitals. Not sure that CK and L were convinced by us.

Too soon, we all had to leave. Peacebang and I headed off to the hotel, saying: Wouldn’t it be fun if they really did decide to move to Boston? Wouldn’t that be a blast?

*****

Fantastic sermon at the worship service this morning. I reported on it in depth for the UUA Web site [link] — the sermon was good enough that I was not able to maintain journalistic detachment.