Today started badly and got worse: both girls up too early and tired, burned their eggs onto the stovetop, rode into a face-numbing westerly on the way to work, all the snow gray and filthy, got to work late to face too many to-dos in too few hours.
Then it started getting better: two emails handling rewrites I thought I'd have to do, my assistant effortlessly figuring out why I couldn't get a budget to balance, hearing a good (if depressing) convocation talk, running a few long-postponed errands over lunch, an easier-than-expected time of editing two other documents, IM'ing with a much-missed friend in the afternoon.
And the day ended very well indeed: a few minutes reading with the girls, going for pizza with another family, a wonderful snowfall starting while we ate, the girls going to bed easily (if a bit late), doing a ski in conditions that were just so ideal that I wound up going twice as long as planned, discovering - after passing beneath them scores of times - two gorgeous oaks whose branches are actually meeting directly over the trail.