Saturday morning, blue sky, cup of coffee, 10-20mm wide-angle lens on the back deck. A day like this calls for outside work: the three unfinished Leyland cypresses do too.

Then again, the Boy looks spectacular, and I consider taking him out to hit the links, only to remember that I don’t play golf.

Nor do I play tennis. My tennis racket has been pressed into carpenter-bee-launching duty and the only tennis balls I have are on the bottoms of the legs of the thirty-odd desks in my classroom.

Such a beautiful day, though. It calls for time outside. It calls for walks. It calls for coffee on the back porch.

What such a start doesn’t call for is time spent waiting for someone to rotate my tires only to leave just as they pull my little Jetta into to garage, but that’s just what happens. And that’s okay. Not at first, but eventually — wasted time is lost time, and it irritates me.

Still, the trees are patient.

By the time I get back to the deck again to take the “after” shot, it’s past nine. Dark, quiet, still. The kids are in bed; the day is over — only one thing remaining: document the day.

And then I discover 147Trance’s YouTube channel, and before I know it, it’s past midnight. Technically, I skipped a day. Well, somewhere it’s still the twenty-fifth…