A Lovely Lady Day

Its another beautiful day in the neighborhoods I pass through, sun up, skies blue, air fresh and cool, and the forecast calling for a slightly more temperate upper 80's.  Traffic was light, which was just as well since the small truck I followed most of the way in this morning was stuck in dawdle mode.  As such, I had plenty of time to watch the passing trees.  I am regularly struck by how many really really tall trees line my route to work, many of them next to the road.  Mostly relatively spindly pines, poker straight and prickly verdant, they look impossibly tall from my near-ground mobile seat.

One indication that it is summer quarter: the morning email inbox's offering of new unread mail contains only a handful of junk mail solicitations from various vendors.  Today it's cloud-based anything and e-meeting and e-portfolio software options. The inbox volume of "real" email will change as more folks arrive on campus, later this morning, but it makes for a quiet and productive start to the day.

The iPod was leaning heavily on jazz this morning, and a couple of more avant-garde tunes, at that.  I didn't make it all the way through Torke's Flint, to be honest.  It is an interesting piece, but wasn't quite the right soundtrack for my slow moving arboreal study.

• Electric Owls: Kallispell
• Michael Torke Band: Flint
• The Bad Plus: My Funny Valentine
• Charles Lloyd: Lady Day
• Counting Crows: Colorblind

Of the bunch, Charles Lloyd hits it the most spot-on, for title, theme, and just-the-right soundtrack for the morning.  Today is a lovely Lady Day, in all likelihood, with all the irresistible charm and intense complexity of a Billie Holiday tune.

My iPod is still, as I write this, in mostly-jazz mode.  Marcin Wasilewski', January album is offering up New York 2007 right now, following an Ellington tune (Zweet Zurzday).  It will be interesting to see how long this genre streak runs.  Oooh - Norah Jones' Shoot the Moon now - perfect!