It’s foggy.

For awhile, the view off the deck resembled an “Atmospheric Perspective For Beginners” tutorial–everything faded neatly into misty white, in a very crisp gradient of dark bare trees to airbrushed gray shadows. Life rarely imitates art so perfectly.

Then twilight hit, and the fog turned blue. It was really quite extraordinarily blue. It was like driving through a KPT Bryce scene. And the streetlights came on, and were perfectly airbrushed circles of orange fading into the perfectly airbrushed blue, and I had to resist the urge to roll down the windows and yell at Nature: “Quit using the airbrush! Crisp! Crisp! You’re getting all mushy!”

Possibly I have some unresolved issues.

Then I came up to an intersection, and it got really cool, since the reds turned the air into a deep misty purple, and the greens turned it turquoise. And that was snazzy.

On the way home, after purchasing a few stuffed animals for the kids on the Christmas list (and gazing longingly at the Folkmanis puppets and thinking “Crud, I wish some of the kids were old enough to appreciate a really FABULOUS stuffed animal…” which at 3 and 5 they probably aren’t, and lacking the space to justify getting myself one, because all I’d do would be stick it on a shelf somewhere and forget to dust it, even though they’re Really Cool. Has anybody seen the Chinese dragon one? It kicks ass.) darkness had fallen, which meant that it was just kinda like driving through dense fog. But it was neat while it lasted.