Poem for Wednesday and Capitol Seagulls

Winter
By Walter De La Mare

And the robin flew
Into the air, the air,
The white mist through;
And small and rare
The night-frost fell
Into the calm and misty dell.

And the dusk gathered low,
And the silver moon and stars
On the frozen snow
Drew taper bars,
Kindled winking fires
In the hooded briers.

And the sprawling Bear
Growled deep in the sky;
And Orion's hair
Streamed sparkling by:
But the North sighed low,
"Snow, snow, more snow!"

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I spent a delightful Tuesday afternoon with Rachel, whom I have known online for many years but never met in person before now, since she has moved to my state! While she was getting herself here, I went out and got us Indian food, which we ate quickly (with help from my cat who wanted to get in our laps) so we could go see Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, since she hadn't seen it yet and I agreed to see it again, heee. It was the perfect day for it since my morning started with learning that Gary Oldman had received an Oscar nomination -- a bright spot amidst really boring nominations, mostly for movies I hadn't seen, in which neither Benedict Cumberbatch nor Alan Rickman turned up in the Supporting Actor category. My goal for Oscar night is to watch Colin Firth hand Best Actress to Viola Davis...and if she must lose, let it be to Glenn Close, who is so overdue it isn't funny, even though I haven't seen Albert Nobbs.

Anyway, we spent lots of time at my house after the movie yakking while Rosie attempted to plant herself permanently in Rachel's lap and trying to decide whether we wanted to watch a movie and talking about our past fandoms. We ended up deciding that we should watch some Voyager, so we watched the generally well done two-parter Year of Hell and then, because I'd been going on about producers who abuse shippers, we watched "Resolutions." It has easily been a decade since I saw it and oddly I enjoyed it quite a bit; all my residual Janeway/Chakotay rage seems to have dried up. Paul made us all black bean soup and corn bread and Adam told us about his second semester schedule, which he prefers in all ways except that he has all his academic classes in the morning so he can't finish his homework at lunch.

Adam had to watch the State of the Union for his AP Government class, so this year the whole family watched (Daniel was on Gchat). I shall not bother analyzing the speech though I will say that I was impressed with how hard Obama tried to be bipartisan and was therefore surprised by a Republican rebuttal that simultaneously accused Obama of being rabidly partisan while making many of the same exact arguments that Obama did. Sigh. At least Colbert's interview with Maurice Sendak rocked utterly. Here are some photos of one of my favorite aspects of Congress, namely the seagulls that live in the reflecting pool outside of the Capitol Building where Congress convenes: