This morning marked the first class of the fall semester for me. Unlike past semesters when my classes were stacked up to make very busy Tuesdays and Thursdays, I will be teaching Tuesday through Friday from 8am-10am. It’s still two classes, but for various reasons the schedule worked out this way. It will take a little while to get used tot he relatively early (for me) start time, but I think in the end the regularity across days will probably help facilitate a more consistently productive schedule for me. Reflecting back on the last 2+ months of few and far between updates, it’s been kind of a busy summer. I picked up some new work that I can do from home, but getting up to speed on that has taken a significant amount of attention. In part due to that (as well as copious amounts of rain being a little demotivating at times) I’ve not gotten out quite as much as I imagine I would have liked to. Still, I did get out at times, and have quite a few pictures to process and upload, so over the coming months I hope to get that taken care of (if you want to make sure not miss backdated posts, you can subscribe to e-mails by entering your address on the right).
On Sunday the clouds were low and rain was quite heavy at times. Temperatures were in the lower 50s, but it didn’t seem especially cold, so I was a little surprised when I saw someone post on Facebook that there was snow down on Bear Mountain. I went out to try and see for myself, but could not see anything through the low-hanging clouds. I tried again on Monday when there were periodic showers instead of the more constant heavy overcast, but my timing was not good, and I didn’t manage to catch the full extent.
Today dawned clear, and the snow from over the weekend was still on mountains over about 4000 feet. I enjoyed the warmth of the sun while working on the south deck this afternoon. Clouds were few and far between, but a bit of a breeze picked up – it seemed to me to be coming mostly from the east, though I’m not sure how much that was influenced by where I was sitting.
Juncos definitely seem to be flocking up more in the neighborhood. I noticed a small flock of maybe a dozen flying through the big pine tree towards the northeast as the evening wore on.