Pile of Logs

 

I had a helluva difficult time getting out of bed this morning.  Not physically, but mentally.  I simply wanted to sleep longer. I read until around 1:30am last night, so I guess it is somewhat understandable that I was not immediately bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when the damn alarm started it’s incessant clanging at 5:00am.  However, I am frustrated in myself for not doing what I needed to do to get up when I should have.  Because of my slovenly ways, I ended up only being able to run 8.5 miles (~13.5km) this morning,  before I had to quit so I could get cleaned up and to the U on time.  I am aggravated with myself. 

More final exams today for my students.  They are always feeling quite nervous and trepidatious at this time because in all my classes, the final examinations of the semester are cumulative across the entire course.  Not all professors do this, and hell, some do not even give final exams anymore.  But, I feel it is an important measure of their retaining of knowledge of the subject. 

On the way to the U, I was listening to NPR on the radio (half listening, truthfully, as it was rather monotonous... news lately has been rather unmeaningful and more or less like prattle most days it seems.... just yammering about Carlson, Lemon, Biden, and Trump.... little-to-no substance to any of it), when I let my mind drift... as you may guess.... to pipes.  For some reason, my thoughts swirled around my childhood.  I can remember some of my very earliest memories involved pipes.  I always was fascinated by them, long before I ever ventured to try them myself.  I can remember when I was three, maybe 4 years old, playing with Lincoln Logs and building homes, buildings and other structures, and I remember pulling pipes off of one or another of my Dad's pipe racks to incorporate into the buildings.... often as "chimneys" to the homes, or sometimes as displays in a store, etc.  I always loved the aroma of my Dad's pipes as he would work at his desk in his den.  I recalled how so very often the light streaming in from one of the windows would filter through the room and how you could see a thin, gentle, hazy line/layer of pipe smoke hovering perhaps at around five feet or so from the ground that spanned across the room.  I remember often climbing onto a chair and standing so that I could have my nose be at the height of that gentle haze so I could smell more fully the delightful array of scents.  I remember playing with my father's pipes in all the racks and rearranging the pipes on the racks in different configurations... by color, by size, by shape, or other groupings.  

PCS = 8.  Just a quiet longing. Difficult to describe.   

PipeTobacco