Taking shortcuts after dark through unlit portions of a major city is risky business and tonight's trip to a coffee house provided a reminder the being lucky is more important than being good, even in the matter of survival skills, since keeping the nose sniffing and the eyeballs peering is no guarantee of spotting that delicate plume of white and black while still at a safe distance. After an undignified bit of backpedalling on my part and a bit of "Do you feel lucky, punk?" swaggering on the part of the polecat, it eventually took itself off into the underbrush and I, after debating while whether it was truly gone or still there waiting in ambush, continued on my way.

I did not walk through Golden Gate Park on my way home, however.

Finally finished David Crystal's Language Play this evening. The meat of the book proved to be all in the last 60 pages and rather not the sort of material I was expecting when I first picked up the book. It did leave me with some thoughts worth pondering about poetry, teasing, the socialization of children and my personal experiences with (very minor, fortunately) learning disabilities.