Many thanks to chosha who tagged me with a Thinking Blogger Award and said many kind things about me in her nomination speech.

I must now pass the torch, according to the rules, and bestow this same award on five people. It's been a difficult decision, but here are my selections:

• Seamus gets the first nod, since he and I think a lot alike, both appreciate the great outdoors, and have each befriended vulpines (though mine's AWOL, at present).
• Rick has to be included in the list, because, like Seamus, he and I think a lot alike and we both tend to obsess over many of the same things. Also, we've both begun posting sporadically of late, but with great flourish when we each remember we have a blog. Maybe the Award will inspire new-found enthusiasm for each of us.
• Edge makes the list, too, for many of the same reasons as Rick. I've been reading them both since the first day I began blogging.
• Brian has to be included, since he takes great care to create well-thought and insightful posts and is quite prolific despite belonging to one of the most overworked and underappreciated professions in the world and because he occasionally includes me in his weekly blog roundup.
• Splendid gets the next spot on the list because amid all the murky water that flows through the river of life, she stops to pan for a few shiny nuggets at the bottom. Also, she's a girl, and including her on this list won't make me look like such a chauvinist.

So, there's my list. Take a look at them all (including the one who selected me). They're worth the read.

Update: Takamitsu finally died shortly after 10:00 a.m. Thursday morning.

When the doctor came in to pronounce his death, we had been talking about how bittersweet life had been for Takamitsu, that he'd lost a child and his wife at a young age, that he had no family, and yet he was so caring toward others.

The doctor heard us comment on the fact that he had no family and said, "What he lacked of family, he certainly made up for in friends." I looked around the room, and for the first time I realized that there were no fewer than sixteen of us by his bedside, the crowd spilling out into the hallway.

That, I think, is the true measure of a man.

I've just walked in the door after a difficult day, and I'm pausing to post this (and catch my breath) before I take a shower and change clothes to head back out for what will be a difficult night.

I received a phone call this morning from a friend of mine letting me know that my friend Takamitsu, about whom I wrote in this post, suffered a massive stroke sometime last night.

He apparently never showed up this morning to help at the food bank where we both volunteer. He's very punctual and very dedicated to the cause, so his absence raised a few worries among those who were expecting him. They tried calling him, but when they didn't get an answer, they assumed that he was just running late.

When the day's work was done, though, he still hadn't made an appearance, so they dispatched a couple of the other volunteers to his apartment to make sure everything was okay.

It wasn't.

His car was in the parking lot at his apartment building, but he didn't answer when they knocked. He lives on the ground floor, so they walked around and peered into the windows of his apartment, and that's when one of them saw him lying on the floor in the doorway between his bedroom and the hall.

They called out to him, but he didn't respond, so they called 911, and a few minutes later, a rescue squad and police car were on the scene. The police kicked in the door and the EMT's rushed him to the hospital, where I've been all day.

He's breathing on his own, but he hasn't regained consciousness and it's unlikely that he ever will. His doctor talked with us early this afternoon and told us that the CT scan they performed when Takamitsu arrived at the Emergency Room showed an enormous CVA on the left side of his brain. He said that they had no way of knowing exactly when the stroke took place, but speculated that it was probably sometime early last night, since Takamitsu was still wearing his street clothes when he arrived. If that's the case, he'd probably been lying there around 16 hours before he was found.

Just before I left, another of his doctors came in to give us an update before the end of his shift and said that, at this point, he doesn't expect that Takamitsu will live more than a few more hours.

I love meteor showers because they give me a sense of the vastness of the universe and my own insignificance by comparison. It's good to start each day with a dose of humility, I think. It keeps us honest.

A few minutes ago, I walked back into my house after spending the night on the top of a mountain, my purpose in doing so to watch the annual Perseid meteor shower which reached its peak just before dawn.

The Perseids occur each year when Earth slips through the cometary debris field left by comet Swift-Tuttle on its 130-year orbit around the sun. When Earth moves through the debris, it is bombarded by the tiny particles which streak into the atmosphere at speeds so great that atmospheric friction burns them up on entry. It's always a great show, but this year was especially grand due to the absence of moonlight to drown out the view.

The Perseids are also known as the "Tears of St. Lawrence," after the patron saint of librarians, cooks, and the needy. The feast of St. Lawrence is held on August 10th each year on the cosmic calendar, a celebration of his life on the anniversary of his death in the year 258 A.D.

St. Lawrence was a deacon in the early church under Pope Sixtus II. He was the keeper of the treasures of the church (much of which included historical documents - thus the patronage of librarians) and distributor of alms to the needy (the word "deacon" derives from the Greek word diakonia, meaning "servant"). The latter of these job descriptions is one of the reasons I hold St. Lawrence in high regard, since it's something we have in common.

Also, he was a huge smartass, which only bolsters my admiration.

St. Lawrence lived in an era when Christianity was outlawed. The Roman Emperor, Valerian I, despised Christians and tried to sweep Rome clean of them. In early August of 258, Valerian issued an edict that commanded that all Christian bishops, priests, and deacons should be put immediately to death. On August 6, 258, Pope Sixtus II was found hiding in the catacombs and was arrested. It is said (probably apocryphally) that as the Pope was being led to the chopping block to be parted with his head, he passed St. Lawrence and assured Lawrence that he would not be left behind, that he would follow his Pope in three days.

Sure enough, Valerian ordered St. Lawrence to surrender all the treasures of the church, to which St. Lawrence replied that it would take him days and days to gather the treasures together to be turned over to the Roman government. Valerian gave him three days, during which St. Lawrence began distributing the treasures to the needy, sapping the church of much of its worth.

On the third day, St. Lawrence, followed by a crowd of the poor and infirm, appeared before Valerian. When Valerian asked, "Where's the loot?" St. Lawrence waved his hand over the crowd and said, "THESE are the treasures of the church."

Valerian didn't like that.

He ordered St. Lawrence to be executed, but not in as humane a fashion as the Pope had been dispatched. Instead, Valerian had St. Lawrence slow-roasted on an iron grill over an open fire. Though this manner of dying was particularly painful, he couldn't resist one last smartass wisecrack and is reported to have told Valerian, "I am already roasted on one side and, if thou wouldst have me well-cooked, it is time to turn me on the other," (which, morbidly enough, is how he became the patron saint of cooks).

Each year, the Perseid shower takes place during the Feast of St. Lawrence, and tradition from the Middle Ages holds that the streaking meteors that flash through the night sky during his feast are the saint's firey tears.

Requiescat in pace, noble martyr, and thanks for the fireworks show.

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This morning, I took my mug of tea and my newspaper down to the dock to enjoy some peace and quiet before the lake became overrun with the weekend boaters churning up the water and making a lot of unnecessary noise. While I sipped and read, a lone swan drifted past.

Typically, these guys mind their own business as long as they aren't harassed, but when they are, they can get fairly vicious. Since they cannot seem to grasp the concepts of trespassing and property ownership, my own clashes with them in the past have occurred when they have come ashore and begun doing things I don't like in the yard. When they do, I've tried to shoo them back into the water, but they stand their ground tenaciously. It doesn't help that people spend a lot of time feeding them, so they've come to think of it as an entitlement.

Each time I've attempted to evict them from my property, tempers have inevitably flared and a great deal of profanity and name-calling have ensued (at least I think it's profanity and name-calling - I don't speak Swan, but their body language is telling).

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Since this one was in the water, though, I didn't pay much attention, but when he turned and headed for shore, I began preparing myself for battle. Surprisingly, though, he apparently held no malicious intent. He waddled up on the shore, down the ramp to the dock, and plopped down three feet from my chair. No harsh language and no ugliness at all. He just wanted to sit and enjoy my company.

Though admittedly based only on this one experience, I have begun to ponder the possibility that swans, taken individually, are kind-hearted and gentle creatures. It's only when they're in groups that they become unruly, possibly showing off for one another. They're like teenagers or members of a biker gang.

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A couple of weeks ago, Sarah came and spent a few days with me, and while she was here, we decided to take a road trip to hike some mountains a few hours west of where I live. I'd never hiked in the area where we ended up, so it was an adventure for both of us.

It had been sunny when we started out, but by the time we reached our destination, the sky had grown a lazy shade of gray and the clouds had settled down around the mountaintops. It didn't look like rain, though, so we went ahead with our plans, but picked one of the smaller mountains - really little more than a big hill - to explore, just in case the weather did turn on us.

About halfway up the mountain, we hit the cloud ceiling and the resultant fog lent a spooky aspect to the woods. At one point, I had an eerie intuition that something wasn't right - a strange sense that we were being watched - even though the place was so remote that I doubted there could be anyone else around for miles. It was such an odd feeling, though, that I mentioned it to Sarah, who thought I was simply trying to scare her. I finally chalked it up to the fact that I'd never hiked there before and brushed it off as being nothing more than my being in unfamiliar territory.

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When we finally reached the top of the mountain, we discovered an old building that appeared to have been abandoned years ago. The roof and floors had long since rotted and collapsed, leaving the brickwork shell as the only portion still standing.

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I couldn't tell what purpose the building may have served in its day. It was too large and the location too remote to have been someone's home. It had the boxy design of some sort of light industrial building, but there were a set of concrete stairs in the front that looked more residential than industrial and the masonry was Flemish bond, far too intricate and meticulous for it to have been used in building any sort of factory. We hunted around outside for a bit, but couldn't find a sign or any other clues that might tell us what it had been.

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We thought briefly about going inside to poke around in the ruins to see if we might find some evidence as to what it might have been, but I was concerned about the stability of the walls and the possibility that they might tumble down upon us. Playing it safe, we decided to leave the mystery unsolved, and after another hour or so of stalking around the grounds, we made our way back down the hill to the car.

We decided to stop to get some dinner before heading home, and at the restaurant, Sarah thought to ask someone what the building might have been. As it turns out, it was an insane asylum, abandoned more than half a century ago. That made sense, It explained the "residential" feel of the place, its size, and its remote location. It also added a little more eeriness to that odd feeling of being watched I had along the way.

We took dozens and dozens of pictures on the hike, but I didn't get around to looking at any of them until earlier today. Most were blurry, no doubt the result of the camera's autofocus being confused by the density of the fog, but a few were recognizable. There really weren't many worth saving, so I was about to delete the whole batch, when I noticed something peculiar in one of the pictures that sent shivers up my spine.

I looked at that photo for a while and concluded that it was probably just a quirk of the camera lens, but it was odd enough that I went back and looked more closely at the rest of them. That's when I noticed this one and this one. These last two photos were taken just a few seconds apart and from exactly the same vantage point, the only difference being that one was zoomed in more than the other, so the "mystery window" should have appeared exactly the same in both.

The spooky thing is that the first picture that caught my attention was taken about two hours earlier and about three miles away from the other two, so if we were, in fact, being observed, we were being stalked.

Heard last night while having dinner in a restaurant in which another diner's particularly rambunctious child had been granted liberty to roam free by his inattentive mother: