Young Charles perhaps thought today was my birthday because he allowed me to sleep till almost 7 a.m. But here I am, finally--comfortably groggy and ready to write to you on this snowy Sunday morning. I was under the impression that yesterday morning's flakes wouldn't add up to much of anything, but in actuality snow fell all day and into the evening, slopping up roads, filling up driveways, and this morning everything is encased in a dense ice-snow crust. We drove across town yesterday evening for a birthday party, and the conditions were dicy. Clearly the amount of accumulation surprised the road crews as much as it surprised me.

The Bills lost their playoff game to the Broncos last night, so my never-intense interest in the NFL has likely dwindled away for the season. I will have to return my thoughts to baseball. I've been excited to learn that the Orioles play spring training games in Sarasota: maybe I'll get a chance to see a game when I'm down there working in March. Or maybe nobody else will want to go. You can't depend on an artist to enjoy a game.

Today we're going out with our neighbor to see the new Jim Jarmusch film, Father Mother Sister Brother. Otherwise, I'll just be puttering . . . watering plants, cleaning bathrooms, roasting a chicken. I'm in the mood for classic Sunday dinner: mashed potatoes, chicken gravy, cranberry relish, maybe a cobbler with the last of my frozen peaches. I finished Atwood's Penelopiad yesterday, started reading Antonio Tabucchi's Dream of Dreams and rereading Nabokov's Pale Fire. I'm still working my way through Tennyson's Idyls. I did a lot of snow shoveling and washed a lot of blankets and towels, but I did not write any new poems. Maybe that will happen today, but maybe not.

This coming week will be crammed with editing, and next Saturday I'll be teaching all day. The poems will have to worm their way through the cracks.