When the Sky is Gray, but the Mood's Not Blue

It's a mostly gray day in Streeterville. There are light winds out of the southeast, off Lake Michigan and it's 63 degrees at the Mini. It's funny how the lake reflects the color of the sky and on a gray day the sky and the lake sort of blend together at the horizon. I know that Indiana is down there at the south end of the lake, but I'll be darned if I can see it today. It's just as non-existent to the vision as is the state of Michigan somewhere over the eastern horizon. Today's it's all gray.

That being said, the reader's impulse might be to assume that the mood of the writer might be as gray as the lake and sky, but not so campers. The mood is on an upswing. The wind was out of the southeast, not the northeast today and the temperature is up in the 60's, not dwelling in the 50's as it has so often recently. The palm trees at the Oak Street Beachstro don't appear to be in danger of freezing. Weather is warming up ever so slowly.

At the Outpost in Back of the Yards, all of the real work has been completed for the year. We're just putting stuff away for the summer, locking up things that matter so the summer school employees or students don't make off with them. Battening down the hatches, so to speak. Tomorrow the kids get their yearbooks and if they don't return textbooks they also get debt slips. Thursday students are off and teachers get free breakfast and a survey to fill out from a school of education that monitors our progress year to year. Generally this day includes a long lunch break somewhere out of the school building. Then comes Friday and the kids are all gone with their report cards by 11 AM. Teachers who attended both Parent-Teacher Conferences during the year are allowed to go home, with full pay by noon. Then there's a party at one teacher's house all afternoon. "School's out for summer!....."

This summer, I have aspirations of completing a fiction project. From time to time I may try some of it out on you, at this location. With no education related issues to take up the tone of my posts, I suspect the entire direction of the Views to go in a different direction. I may take up larger societal issues from time to time, as I always have, but the day to day inspired posts will have a different slant. They'll be based on days spent in an entirely different fashion.

In the meantime, I have to arrange a ride with the Chicago Police Department and interview cops about their jobs and the structure of the Chicago PD and how one gets to be a detective. A friend of mine is coming to visit next week. His name is Ed Van Dyke, Detective, Chicago PD. I hope you like him. For now I need to cogitate. Ta. Ta.