Fog, Luminaries.

Tonight was luminary night in the neighborhood — one of the few neighborhood association rites and rituals to which I am willing to succumb — because I am a damn sucker for all things tastefully Christmas, and even several things not-so-tasteful. The holographic nutcracker, whatever that is, is taking it too far, but a few paper bags and some cheap votives: sign me up.

Plus fog. We're having a fog. Forty degrees and a fog.

In the truck this afternoon, with the dog, I managed to tune in WUNC and thus the BBC, and the Beeb was reporting on One Cold Hand, something I like so much that I think I want to carry it around in my mouth lke a stone, like Jimmy Cross in Tim O'Brien's stories. Now all I can see is shoes in the highway, shirts in the gutters, socks in yards, hats and caps hanging on the spired ends of wrought-iron fences.

Same weather today as yesterday. Somehow we all held our tongues right and earned two gray days. Ten o'clock in the morning looked the same as four in the afternoon.