Today I was tired, too tired to move. It seems my recreation takes more out of me than work--but that's not true. It's just I expect down time to be just that, but then when I'm ready to relax there's always more to do. But it was a nice day today-- maybe one of our last?--so Sarah implored me to do the easy thing, just a walk down the block. The dahlias in [Spanish-American War] Volunteer Park were in bloom and the bees were out in force, sometimes two to a face, getting what they could of these late season blossoms. I was drawn to the shelter of a towering evergreen, and evidently I was not the first--witness discarded hypodermic. There's ways to climb higher than that, at least literally, and I'd never been to the top of the so-called water tower. It's more a water tank, really, clad in a shell of brick with metal steps spiraling around it to the top, which the checker at Trader Joe's told me later was a disappointment as he was expecting something a little more open. But there's this mass of water, see? Held together by riveted sheets of steel. Sarah repeated some urban legend and guessed there were 200 some odd steps but that seemed extreme. At Cornell the clock tower is famed to have 161 and this looked shorter than that, with lower risers to each step. So, starting down, I suggested we count them. "109," I said. "107." She was correct.