What shall I do with myself?

Pleasures and reasons to be grateful today:

Sleeping in
Sunshine!!!!!!
A lovely pendant and snowman ornament from foolishfiddler; did you make the moon piece? It is lovely.
Playa temple dust from serolynne and radven; thank you. The meaning fits perfectly into my goals for the coming year.
Cards from sacredchao, honeyswtrose, dr_nebula, rebellibrarian, trillsieaumonae,as well as three from my family back in Oklahoma and one from my once dissertation advisor now colleague and friend. Thank you all.
Amazingly Sprint finally did something right and the refund check came in the mail yesterday.
Birds outside my window (so far the usual suspects for this winter)

One minor disappointment: the CD First Light by Moonstruck is not at all what I expected. It needs a home; anyone interested? Warning it sounds nothing like Witch of the Wildwoods in fact I have a hard time believing that it is the same group though Amazon makes it appear that it is. This is the editorial description of First Light on amazon "Powerful Melodic Death Metal In The Style Of In Flames & Dark Tranquility With A Hint Of Classic Iron Maiden. "

I am not feeling the creatie muse today despite having my crafting station all set up and waiting for me. I am going to save crafting for another day when I have less of a headache. The things that have more appeal today:
(1) going off on a harbor tour of Michigan City and New Buffalo to see what birds are around (bad use of fossil fuel as I want to head that same direction to buy groceries later this week but still appealing);
(2) going into the office and working on the statistics course (I do realize that the fact that this sounds interesting is warped);
(3) attacking the closet and bookshelves in another round of decluttering; or
(4) (5) going to the gym which is not an option.

What doesn't sound appealing is cooking. I am pretty sure nothing but fast food is open in the town where I live. I imagine that the casino are serving food today and there is one of those in both Michigan City and New Buffalo. What I really want is pizza; I only want them a couple of times a year. Sadly the Pizza Hut here burned las winter and the new one won't open for 3 more weeks. I am very hard to please today.

From random bits of paper I have saved

"Life pulsates with so many pregnant possibilities for good that it should not be wasted . . . Every moment of each day counts. Our best recourse is to live with intensity and exhilaration -- in thought, experience, action, and deed."

Paul Kurtz from Affirmations: Joyful and Creative Exuberance as published in Jan/Feb 2005 issue of Utne.

What I actually did with my day

I headed off in search of food which proved to be tougher than I expected as even the fast food places here are closed today. Once I realized the only thing open in Chesterton were a couple of gas stations and Walgreens, I decided to take advantage of the sun and go for a walk at the Dunes before heading to Michigan City to see if anything was open there.

I went for a walk along part of Trail 8 and walked to places I hadn't been. There were actually quite a few people out taking advantage of the mild temperatures (near 40) and sunshine. After my walk there I headed to the harbor at Michigan City. Again several people about. Again I walked to places I hadn't before. I tried to walk out to the light house but part way out the pier was covered in a solid sheet of ice so I turned back. Me quest for lunch ended at IHOP which was the only thing I could find open.

I snapped some photos of the most common sights of the day:

ice art courtesy of mother nature, gulls, reflections on the water, more ice and reflections, and mallards.

I made it home just as the sun went down. A hot shower to chase away the chill later I am pondering what to do with my evening.

New movie for the list

I have this list of movies that I love because they are about finding or creating non-traditional webs of love and family. Tonight added another movie to that list, Waitress.