February 20: Birthday

The Chinese Year of the Sheep began yesterday, and today I begin a new turn around the sun. The way a new year begins always feels auspicious. I have a good feeling about this one. We celebrated Chinese New Year with tea and dumplings in a sunny Portland cafe yesterday, and again last night with more dumplings (and cocktails) with good friends at Empire. This morning began with breakfast on the go from Standard Baking Co., which I ate while tromping around the frigid Portland waterfront looking for white-winged gulls with a birder friend--an outing puncuated by calls from my mother and sister singing "Happy Birthday." The white wings of Iceland Gulls shone in the sun, seals surfaced nearby, crows chased a Red-tailed Hawk overhead, a Peregrine stood sentinel on the Casco Bay Bridge, and all is right in my world.

A new year starts well:

coffee and croissant,

gulls along the snowy pier.

Update: And my birthday closed with a brilliant conjunction of the young Moon, Venus, and Mars in the southwest sky... All signs point to yes.

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