February 2023

This picture is actually Russia, not Lacey

 I may have written this before, because February comes around every year, but I look forward to the month of February. In the Pacific Northwest, people are very aware of a condition called Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD, because our winters are. in a word, depressing. I don't have anything that would be classified as a disorder, but starting in November, I find the winters... annoying, let's say.

More than the rain and the cold, it is the darkness that gets to be draining. The days here get very short, and especially when I was working, I would get up in darkness, commute to work in darkness, work all day indoors, commute home in darkness, and take a walk after dinner, at 7:30, in darkness that may as well have been midnight. In addition to the short days, we get a lot of cloudiness here, particularly in winter. We can go a week without seeing the sun.

So February is generally encouraging, as the days get noticeably longer and warmer, usually. And the days have gotten longer, no doubt about that. My plants in the backyard are putting out their first leaves, although they may regret that. But the weather has been cold, and we have a chance of snow during the next few days, with nighttime temperatures still below freezing.

Which is all a way of saying that, in February, my walking progress was pretty lackluster. Two times, I failed to get my 10,000 steps. My average steps per day was the lowest since last January, except for October when I was on vacation. I took zero days off of my projected end date, which is 103 days from now.

Even so, I averaged 11,000 steps per day for the month, with 3,000 steps to spare, and I trudged across Alabama, to the town of Cowarts, 20 miles from the Georgia border. I will be in Georgia by this weekend, in Florida the week after, and by the time I get to Florida, maybe the weather will be better, and we'll get this thing done.