Out in the sun again

I found it easy today to skip my usual sedentary coffee for lunch and instead attach the iPod and take a walk. The weather is exactly perfect here for a good lunchtime stroll. Starting five years ago when I quit smoking, I walked Oakland looking for what is there and where I might actually eat (instead of sit, chain-smoke, coffee), I walked around Lake Merritt, I walked the hilly Piedmont-Grand neighborhoods. Then I found the lobby of this office building, with its fountain induced white noise, to be a perfect place to focus on reading. It has been at least a year and a half for me of sitting at lunch with coffee and a book, previous to that I walked every lunch.

Getting out today was refreshing, in the true experiential sense -- clear sky, warm sun, cooling breeze, green park, active and engaged people, sparkling lake, pleasant birds. Perhaps more than the weather is changing.