Occasionally, though not often, you can come out ahead by goofing off. I got up very late this morning. I've been sick, and I have no super-urgent projects, and the morning was gray and gloomy, and hell, it's new year's eve. So I slept in. This meant I got to the river much later than usual. Which put me there during the exact half hour it snowed. Dark gray gloom turned to huge soft flakes from a very low sky; by the time I was ready to leave, the snow had stopped and the sky was just a lighter gray gloom. But what a magic half-hour! No wind, so the flakes -- and they were gigantic -- plopped without visible effect onto the glassy dark water and just vanished. Scattered boats, including the Circle Line cruiser and a paddle-wheel riverboat, set up wide, shallow swells. The buildings across the river, hidden in the mist, provided a dark scrim backdrop for the snow.

And then, to show you how wrong I can be: a pair of mallards, male and female, come paddling along, nibbling at whatever's floating on the river's surface near the wall. Just as I'm wondering whether this is Ricky and Lucy, or Fred and Ethel, or some other pair on their way south from, like, Vermont, I spot a second pair on the other side of the pilings. All four of them looked very at home, swimming deliberately to various duck dining spots. So I think these are the Ricardos and Mertzes; they apparently are planning to stay. Last winter they stayed and I worried about them, but I guess I don't have to do that. AND, while I watched them, in the gorgeous snow, a flock of geese -- and I mean like FIFTY geese -- came charging over from New Jersey, settled in the water with a lot of honking and splashing, hung around for awhile and then took off suddenly, back west. I don't know if these are locals, though I think not because there are so many of them; this part of the river doesn't support more than two dozen or so in summer. So maybe THESE are northern birds headed south. And maybe they think, like those two new brown ducks I've posted about, that this IS south.

What got me was, the snow stopped and the ducks and geese left at about the same time. By lounging around under my quilt instead of getting up-and-at-'em, I hit a great half-hour of the river's day.

Hope I don't take the wrong lesson from this.

Happy new year, youse all.