Denning

It is a grey, dark, rainy day. The kind of day where I don't mind so much having to go to work. The kind of day where I don't mind that my office at work has no windows. In fact, the temptation to mostly close my door and den up is pretty strong.

I have three candles burning on the side of my desk, and they smell like apples and pumpkin and cinnamon. Like fall. My space heater is doing its best to keep my little office warm, and in a little while, I'll go get a big mug of vanilla coffee, and that smell will mix with the apple and pumpkin and cinnamon, and I'll nurse it all morning. And when it's gone, I'll have orange spice tea.

There's still work to do. The proposal effort is still going. But the urgency for my part of it has relaxed, for now. I'll probably still have to come in for at least one day this weekend, but I'm not thinking about that, right now. I spent yesterday getting caught up on a bunch of other tasks, and I'm down to just a handful of things to do, today. And they're not things I dread -- they're tasks that might actually help some people, tasks that will provide me with a little bit of challenge, that will exercise talents I don't get to use nearly often enough. I'm even looking forward to them, a little bit.

There are worse ways to spend a dreary dark rainy day than with satisfying work and pleasant smells and tastes and the flicker of candlelight on the periphery.

I am... content.