Like a kind of poetry

(My workplace is somewhere in this picture - can you guess which building I'm in?)

This morning there was a blanket of fog hanging over the tops of the buildings downtown. There should be a little bit of a cold front moving in to bring the temperatures down this weekend. As I was walking to my building along the sea wall a small snook came into the shallows and kept pace with me until I reached the harbor. I've noticed an increase in the number and variety of sea birds using the docks and fishing closer to the marina, and there's been an osprey using one of the buildings as a platform during its circuits on the parimeter around the basin.

I'm a little tired today. I was up late reading Hyperion, so now I'm about three quarters of the way through, at the point where Brawne Lamia is relating her reason for being on the pilgrimage. I was reading some spolier-free reviews, and the comparisons to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is pretty accurate. I've also noticed a distinct theme in each of the traveler's stories. The beginning of Lamia's was very reminiscent of a pulp detective novel, with a bit of role reversal. I'm enjoying all of the references to Keats, as well. I thought the story of the Weintraubs was appropriately tragic, and I was reminded of both The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (coming soon to a theater near you...) and, to a lesser extent, Counterclock World. But I have a sense that, obviously, nothing is as it seems with any of these stories. I'm waiting for the traitor to be revealed - I'm sure it won't be who I'm thinking it is at this point.

A need for strong and burnt coffee compelled me to wander over to the bookstore and even though they didn't have the second book in the Hyperion series in stock (the selection at that particular B&N is limited because it's an unusually small store), I did pick up Pratchett's Lords and Ladies and The Man in the High Tower by PKD. This is Dick's alternate future novel, which I've heard a lot of praise for - according to the forward, it heavily relied on one of my favorite books as a reference: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer. I got a lot of funny looks while toting that huge volume around in 9th and 10th grade...more than once someone actually had the nerve to ask me if I was a neo-Nazi (me of all people?! C'mon now!). I always had to explain that it was an account of historical fact, not a damn how-to manual.