Thursday’s Theme Music

A sublime rollout of sunshine woke the valley at 7:21 this morning. True, large swaths of the valley’s population were already awake or now retiring to sleep. Depends on your species and intentions, doesn’t it?

October 13, 2022, has arrived, a Thursday in the common era. A mountainous presence lowered the air’s temperature to a pleasant mid-fifties Fahrenheit overnight. Our meteorologic oracles say temperatures will climb to the high eighties. They said the same yesterday but our sector never saw anything above 81 degrees F. Not that I’m complaining. It was coolish but sunny, comfortable weather for short sleeves and short pants. The lower temperature seems to be a collateral impact from the Cedar Creek smoke veiling the sun. Not too smoky, it’s a moderate haze that manages to pull our air quality to less than ideal level, 63. The solar system’s movement will bring us sunset at 6:32 PM.

Now it’s up to the daylighters to decide what to do in this time and environment. I have a variety of chores and actions needed to catch up with modern demands, which is often known as ‘paperwork’ even when it comes in electronic form. We had a celebratory beer for our departed member, Chris, and planned our annual celebration of being which will be in November this year. Paella is the featured dish.

Of course, I’m sitting here as sunshine completes its morning takeover thinking, okay, it’s time to do this and that. Time to get cleaned up and dressed. Time to make some phone calls, check some emails, read some blogs, write some fiction. Time to watch the Jan 6 hearings, time to —

Well, the point has been driven in, hasn’t it? It was ‘the time’. The Neurons leaped onto the words. “Oh, oh, oh,” they shouted. “Here’s a song about that.”

They began playing “It’s Time” by Imagine Dragons from 2012. That delivered me to now, where the song continues rolling through the morning mental music stream. And here I am.

Yes, the coffee is brewed and ready to drink. It’s time to get on with the day and get things done. Stay positive, test negative, and carry on with what you need to do. It’s time, don’t you know.

Cheers

October 13, 2022 0

Monday’s Theme Music

Yeah, so Monday. Yawn, scratch, sniff. The waning days of September — it’s the 26th, you know — has a waning morning sun. Yellow light seeping through sketchy gray clouds make us all wonder, why am I up again? It’s only seven in the morning.

‘We’ was me as I was alone, forcing myself up out of bed to carve out writing time. Yesterday was a hectic day, socializing with sisters visiting Mom, and Mom’s PN visited to establish appointments and create the official record, incidents and worries by Mom over Mom. Writing time? Hah. What’s that? So, there I was, counting time down to sunrise as I typed, warmed coffee in hand to give my blood some life.

Sunrise came at 7:23 and left me pining for summer’s sharper, more brilliant light, but wishes like that don’t slow the Earth’s turning as it whizzes through space around the sun. It’s 55 F, a chilly, slightly moist morning. Contours and cloud shapes suggest rain is not far away in time and space, and will temper the sun’s influence all day. The great weather ‘they’ say that we’ll be limited to a high of 19 C before established planetary routines give us sunset at 7:23 this evening.

It’s Monday, so you know The Neurons plied me with songs about Monday. A few exist. But it’s also September, so they brought out a plate of those as well. Finally, though, that sky is a hazy shade of winter in this early light, weak coffee view. So here comes The Bangles covering Simon & Garfunkel’s “Hazy Shade of Winter”. I’ve used it here before but it’s all I can come up with without more and stronger coffee. Yeah, there’s no snow on the ground — although I haven’t looked in twenty minutes, so some may have fallen — and yes, I know it would need to get colder first and it’s just September in Western PA and not really probable at this time of year but indulge me.

Stay positive, test negative, use precautions, get the latest vax, and here we go. Coffee? Yes, please, please, PLEASE! Hope you enjoy this tune. Make it a glorious Monday. I’m gonna try, if my blood ever starts circulating.

Cheers

September 26, 2022 0

September 24, 2022 0

September 23, 2022 0

The Divorce & Money Dream

My wife and I divorced. We then went on a vacation together, where we stayed in a mid-range luxury condo. Her sisters were there, in adjoining places, along with their children. We were all younger than in RL by thirty years or so. My wife – B – and I had dinner and then attended a presentation on the environment and climate change in a huge, packed auditorium lit with golden chandeliers. The speaker was a good-looking man with a gold tan who had bestselling books on the subjects. My wife met him after the presentation. They fell in love and married.

I went back to my condo. My wife came to visit. We could see into her new husband’s place, as it was next door. Large and modern, it featured realms of glass. Golden lights lit it inside. B told me that the home was enormous, taking up two entire floors of the luxury townhomes next door, and that her new husband was dying. He passed the next day, leaving everything to B. She announced that as part of that, she was receiving over $13,000 a month in royalties.

I was happy for her but startled by that amount. We’d been there for almost a week and I needed to leave soon. I didn’t have reservations to fly out but had a day and a half left before I needed to get back so I decided not to make reservations yet. I was very busy at that point. The condo had become a little cluttered with piles of coins. My nieces and nephews began collecting them and taking them to my sisters-in-law and wife, who kneeled on the carpet divided the piles of coins among themselves. This didn’t worry or bother me because I’d discovered large caches of cash which belonged to me. I was happy for them to take the coins, but every time I turned around, I discovered another pile of coins.

Then, oh no, I was late for leaving and I hadn’t made a reservation! I chastised myself, thinking if I had made reservations, I wouldn’t be late because I would have had more structure. I succeed more with structure.

A man came by and informed me that I needed to leave, and that if I didn’t I would be fined. I laughed at the threat and noted that I had cash on hand and my ex was receiving $13,000 a month in royalties. The man left. I told the rest of my party that I needed to leave and would be departing shortly. My ex-wife said something back about the need to take care of her new inheritance. She was to go into her ‘new place’ to inventory its contents. I asked her about the hold up, and she said, “There’s a lot of places,” and held up keys. One key ring with keys were hanging on another key ring of keys. “He has places all over town. And you should see the cars.”

Dream end

June 12, 2022 0

May 26, 2022 0

Worth Mentioning

Thirty-two years after it was launched into space, the HST team celebrated the Hubble Space Telescope’s contribution to space exploration by publishing a photograph of five galaxies which are merging into one. Talk about a merger! This event is expected to take about a billion years to finish. I keep wondering, what’s the due diligence on something like this?

The five galaxies involved are called the Hickson Compact Group (HCG) 40, an interesting name for a progressive rock group. (Their music is probably spacy, doncha think?) Contemplating this information is staggering on many levels. One, that we’ve achieved the capabilities as a species to look into deep space and understand this. Two, that the event will take so long. Such patience is required. If I was one of the stars involved in the galaxy merger, I’d be, like, man, this is taking forever. Such is my response at a grocery store when I need to wait an extra sixty seconds because people can’t remember their PIN (no, I’m not looking at my wife), or my exasperation rising due to pages loading v e e r r r y s s s l l o o o w w w l l l y y y on the net. I can’t imagine waiting a billion years for anything, although it’s all relative, innit? Stars live longer than I do, so far as we know at this point.

So if you have the time and resources, that is to say, if you’re not suffering from food and housing insecurity, and you’re not a refugee from war, famine, or natural disaster, and if you have the net connections and a computer, in other words, if you’re a fortunate person in relative measure, it’s worth taking a few minutes to consider this far-away event. Helps add a little more perspective.

Cheers