Venturing outside

After a long stretch of what felt like utter and complete hibernation, I ventured out into the world today for my first outdoor run since Saturday.

The weather was of the 16-degrees-feels-like-10 variety, sometimes with bright sun, so the sunny stretches with the wind at my back felt downright tropical and the ones with the wind in my face were, well, less so. I had a facemask on, which I usually kept pulled under my chin, and a hat, and I wore my coziest, thickest pullover, so I was pretty comfortable.

Honestly, the whole expedition felt comfortable compared to the cold earlier in the week. You know your meteorological norms are shifting when you take your dog out at night, nod your head happily at the mild weather, and learn that it's 3 degrees. (That happened last night.) Everyone was happy.

The pets seemed happy, from what I could tell from their footprints.

The little birds were happy.

I was happy!

The sun and clouds were so pretty.

Also, a light coating of snow had fallen, and there was some interesting stuff going on in the sidewalks.

Some of paths looked like this - kind of what you'd expect for footprints on fresh snow, right?

But some looked like this, sort of like film negatives?

And when the sun was shining on those funny tracks, they glittered and looked like this: 

How in the heck does this happen? I have no idea, but I'd like more of it.

I had my fingers crossed that the nicer weather would last until evening so I could take Wish for a better walk than we've been able to do in the last week, but alas, the winds were starting to pick up again even by later in the afternoon. A cold front swooped back in, the winds are whipping, and the temperature is about to dip back below zero. The chill is back, but it sure felt good to have the sun on my face this afternoon, even just for a little bit.