The best views

Every now and again you should really consider how far digital photography processing has come. You can do this with the camera you have right now, if you shoot something in the dark, and quickly, and from the hip, perhaps while driving slowly, as if you are preparing for a turn.

Which is what I was doing, having driven the last bit of the day’s drive west, it was time to turn south (ha!) into the subdivision where we keep all of our things. The way the house is oriented, the way things surround it, you get only the most brief sunset. So, sometimes, if the timing is right, I can see a bit of sunset on the ride to the house.

It was the second best view of the day.

The best view was having lunch with The Yankee. We don’t do a lot of food photography around here, so there’s not a picture, and I hope you’ll just take my word for it.

I guess, then, that makes this the third-best view of the day:

It was a five-mile run, the longest of my very slow rebuild. We have two solid three-mile routes in the larger neighborhood area, and there’s a solid 10K, too, but I’m just making stuff up at this point. The problem with running something in-between is that you have to get back to where it is warm, and dry, and where you don’t have to run. So there was some willful backtracking through another neighborhood. These were roads I ride on my bike. But that’s a different speed — which changes a lot of our perceptions – and in the daylight.

The house with the fountain, though, has found a Christmas duck.

It’s both genius and maniacal. Who would design this? Who would approve it? Surely there must have been a board meeting, a marketing whiz all agog over the idea — imagine the images in the bulk mailers — but an MBA asking How is this going to scale?

Market research, says the market research firm, says people with fountains need giant ducks with winter caps and scarves. And over the second martini that started to make a little sense to more people around the table. And here we are.

I can’t remember if I’ve seen this before. Last year, maybe. But it could be a false memory. How silly would it be, and how impressionable would the mind be, to think to itself, while you’re running “Oh, yes, this was here last year.”

So I’ll have to see if it is there next year. If I remember. On a day when I don’t have two other great views. This duck deserves a promotion.

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