The photo on the left is facing North, toward a sky the color of a Chinese egg1.  It’s so dark, the camera switched to night mode.  The photo on the right is facing South, toward a pleasant sky.

Both photos were taken at 8:44 AM this morning, two hours after dawn.   Weather radar is not encouraging.

Sparky is at DEFCON 4.  He stays within 2 feet of me, and is ready to climb up on my lap and start panting like he’s at the tail end of giving some randy bitch a good rogering.2

Fortunately, we already went for our morning walk, so Sparky is comfortable in that regard.

I have about a half-dozen things I need to do today, but Sparky and the weather give me a good excuse not to be productive for a while.

1 A Chinese egg is a broad term for one of the only pleasant food surprises in Hong Kong.  Sure, there was plenty of seafood, steak from New Zealand and familiar Chinese food like sweat and sour chicken.  It was fine, some better and some worse than we get at home, but familiar. 

I did have some dishes that were new to me, like cooked sea monster from the wet market or barbecued chicken feet, but none of those were happy memories.

A Chinese egg, or Chaye Dan, is a shelled hard-boiled egg that has soaked in green tea.   It looks like a used egg from an Army surplus store, but it is tasty.  A hard-boiled egg is pretty bland, so the green tea gave it a little bit of a tangy taste.

2  I’m currently going through the Flashman series of books.  Harry Flashman is a fictional decadent British coward who happens to have taken part in major historic events in the 1800’s.   I’m picking up quite a bit of British colonizer slang.