My employer’s logo is a castle. It’s not as glorious as having my own castle ruins to live in would be, but it suggests that things are moving in the right direction on that front.

I relish the 25 minute walk between the building where I work and where the bus drops me off/picks me up near the security gate entrance. In the mornings, the cool, grey, early dawn breeze is so enlivening. The overall chilly temp clashes with my hoodie and windbreaker layers, yielding a hybrid sensation of cool warmth that’s addictive. Walking is often nearly meditative, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it were in some ways therapeutic. Occasionally, a vehicle slows and the driver offers me a ride. When I respectfully turn them down, they roll away perplexed, unable to understand why anyone would choose to walk when wheels are available.

If a bed is your only furniture, it becomes a quicksand trap for sleep. The other evening around 8:00 I was lying on it fully clothed and wearing my jacket, looking up at the ceiling, and then I woke up after midnight.

I’ve since moved into my new apartment, the duplex in a residential neighborhood instead of the high-rise studio room with a faceless, corporate landlord. The numbered portion of my street address can be read as a 4-bit binary number and, if so read, its decimal equivalent is both equal to:

1. the first (or second) half of how the number is likely to be audibly described to someone seeking directions, where the other half is the other half repeated and
2. the number of the base which, by definition, corresponds to decimal numbers.

1010, “ten ten”, base 10