maribou | spring is sprung

It was too nice to stay inside after work today, so I spent a few hours tromping around down by the creek. I made several interesting discoveries in bits of it I hadn't tromped on before, including a footbridge that crosses the creek just above water level (instead of high up above the ravine) and would thus be excellent for summer picnicking and general sitting-while-swinging-one's-legs-over-the-water activities. (Poohsticks, anyone?)

I found where the homeless people moved their nests after they got rousted out of the stretch between the college and the public library - it's about 4 blocks south of the library in a really really brushy part and I wouldn't have seen them except that brushy banks are ever so much more interesting than groomed trail. I had to duck under and hop over and I saw some things that might or might not have been bed places and then ... there was someone's small camp. It was fairly bizarre to be standing there on the edge of it; I felt intensely curious, uncomfortably intrusive, and a little bit 'omg this dude is totally going to come back any second and freak out that I am this close to his hole-up spot'.

The best things that happened on my walk:
1) I was up high on one bank and I saw a fox digging around at the edge of the other bank, down near the water. He startled when I stopped, but I sat down behind some bushy things and he either forgot about me or couldn't be bothered to care, and went back to what he was doing, hunting and catching a wee mousie and then stretching himself out, poking around ... goofing off. The funniest thing was that the whole time he was going about his business, I could see people and dogs going along the trail about 12 feet higher up his bank than he was, completely oblivious that there was a fox there. Made me think about how often that probably happens to me ... and made me sort of dubiously ponder whether that also happens frequently with the cougar they've posted signs about, la la la, not thinking about that anymore.

2) I got done with my exploring about 35 minutes before dinnertime, so I was taking the long route to the meetup spot. I walked past the lobby doors of the we-used-to-be-upper-crust hotel, and I saw a sign with piano keys on it. I vaguely remembered a friendly acquaintance of mine saying something about said hotel having jazz on the weekends, so I poked my head in. And there were three extremely venerable old men playing drums and bass and piano, with some kid sitting in occasionally on trumpet through the goodness of their collective hearts (he wasn't bad, just green). Instead of spending a half-hour sitting outside in the cold dark, I spent it in front of a fireplace in a comfy leather chair, staring at pleasant geometries and listening to a jazz trio that was playing more to each other than for anyone else in the room.

Supper was very yummy and full of cheese and