It's 73 friggin' degrees! I don't want to be responsible today.

Does it get any better than this?

The ocean is an almost unnatural hue of royal blue resting under an equally brilliant and cloudless sky. Gently curling, bright white breakers roll and trill on a bed of cascading pebbles.

Reading Rock, nearly five miles offshore, is squashed to half its usual size and has been dragged at least a mile closer to shore - or at least it appears so in the optical tricks played on this shimmering mid-winter day.

The temperature at the office reached 73 degrees shortly after 12 o'clock, only to plummet 11 degrees before the bells chimed half-noon.

Few travelers pause here on their Redwood Highway journey today, and most that do are in splendid moods - a tangible benefit of sunny and warm winter days. That the visitors are few allow me dive deeper into Thoreau's Walden, fast becoming my unreachable ideal for the mental meanders some read here.

White gulls dot the sapphire ocean a few yards offshore. Little Girl Rock stands stately and calm, the proverbial ship in a calm harbor.

There's little time to enjoy the beach on this most glorious of days. Try as I might, my presence is requested at an interagency meeting about soil. I can think of no better way to spend the finest day in months than sitting in a windowless conference room discussing the bureaucracy of dirt. (My apologies to those earnest soil scientists out there among my readership.) I aggressively tried to avoid this entanglement, but I was discovered before I could wander too far off.

I've been scanning the ocean for whales all morning. Though today's becalmed sea is ideal for spotting southbound spouts, none desired discovery today. If only I could've been as fortunate.