Tag: weather

Wednesday’s Theme Music

6:20 AM. It was about twenty-two minutes before sunrise. I was in front of my house, talking to Papi, the floof is who also hailed as the Ginger Prince and the Slender Blade. My house front faces west. Clouds were rolling in over the western horizon. They surprised me because they were contrary to expectations.

Rain began. Big, fat diamond drops. Wow, cool, I thought. 6:21, the rain stopped.

Although the day grew lighter with the sun’s presence, I couldn’t see it. It was already 22 C at that point heralding that the forecasts that we’ll strike 100 F today are probably right. Air is fresh and clean and in the green.

8:08 AM. The Slender Blade and I were in the backyard speaking with the other house floof, Tucker, the black and white fella also known as Your Lordship. Sunshine cracked in between spaces shaped by a roof and a tree. Rain showered down for ten furious seconds and then stopped. Seems like Wednesday, September 7. 2022, will be an interesting day.

Mom is in the hospital, taken in yesterday afternoon after falling at home, all COVID related. Word this morning is that she ruptured her appendix. She was also severely dehydrated. Fingers crossed that she and the medicos work their way through these issues.

While I was floof visiting and noting the weather this morning, I looked to the south and reflected, it’s been a long time since we’ve gone south, i.e., into California. Wildfires and COVID, of course. Plus, expensive.

But The Neurons heard me saying something about traveling south in my head. Right away, they plugged a song by Alice in Chains, “I Stay Away” (1993), into the morning mental music stream.

Here’s the music. I’ve had my coffee. Heading to an appointment to have a Ziopatch applied. Stay positive, test negative, and so on. Cheers

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

It’ll be 103 F today, so we have that to look forward to. Everything is relative, so it could be worse. Fire might be consuming us, flooding drowning us, or hurricanes and cyclones could be blowing us away. A roulette wheel of disasters is possible.

The sun, though, never intimates these things. Rising at 6:41 this morning, the sunshine provided a sweet sight in the cool morning. Bathing the forested hills and pines with gentle light, illuminating a Technicolor blue sky, it seemed like the world was close to perfect. Perhaps, for that period, in that slice of valley, it was.

It’s 83 F now, getting hot fast. Haze now scuffs the sky. We still have workable breathing air — 62 on the scale, yellow and moderate — as shifting winds and high pressures protect us from wildfire smoke. Idaho is blazing away to the northeast. Several California infernos are drawing news and attention. The three that generally plague us, Mill Creek, McKinney, and Rum Creek, are all within seventy-five miles, are burning but containment is growing on them. Fingers crossed. When I mentioned this on FB and note that I’m safe, my siblings and their hubbies urge me to move east to where they reside.

This is Tuesday, September 6, 2022. Sunset will be at 7:36 this evening.

The Neurons dug into the mind section dedicated to when I was a thirteen-year-old living in Pittsburgh, Pa, in 1969. One of the songs dominating the air that summer was “Hot Fun in the Summertime”, a groovy, funky piece of rock by Sly and the Family Stone. Hope you find some enjoyment in it. Came to me as I was walking the hills as the land cooled down just before sunset yesterday.

Stay positive and test negative. I’ve had coffee but another cup is calling. Who am I to deny that coffee the pleasure of satisfying my tastebuds and stimulating my brain? Not I, sir. Not I.

Here’s the tune. Cheers

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Sunday’s Theme Music

When the sky rolled over again, we saw land. Scrambling off the raft and through the water, we came to a shore. Jersey solemnly pronounced, “This is Sunday.”

Now, it’s September 4, 2022, Labor Day in the United States, a holiday to celebrate working people. Many must work during the celebration because work never ends. Our smoke is better today, but good news is thin when it comes to the fires and fighting them. Fingers crossed, positive energy for those areas, prayers if that’s your thing, for them. Air quality for us is hovering at 100 but the smell is much better today. My eyes are only tearing a little, there’s less ache in the back of my throat, and the snot faucet has been turned off. I call that an improvement.

Only reached 85 F yesterday. Winds shifted and pressures moved. Today it’s 18 C now with a high of 90 F lurking out there. They’re forecasting a steady rise back to triple digits this week, and then a general cool down as we laze toward autumn. A leisurely sunrise was witnessed by those looking to the East at 6:39 AM. Look west at 7:40, and you’ll catch the ‘setting’ sun.

I have “Candida”, a 1970 song by Tony Orlando and Dawn in the morning mental music stream. The Neurons put it there when the cats and I went out back to do a sniff test. Lovely cold air and no bonfire scents made me think of the air as fresh and clean. Those words are lyrics in “Candida” so The Neurons fired up the song faster than you can say, “What?” Tony Orlando and Dawn wasn’t slotted in between The Who, Led Zep, and Pink Floyd as part of my regular music rotation, but the group made it big. Their sound regularly graced AM pop stations and television variety shows. Mom liked their songs, so whenever we were in the car and one came up, it wasn’t unusual for her to tip the volume up two notches.

“Candida” is a repeat. The last time The Neurons volunteered the song was in Feb. of 2019, and it was because of dreaming. See how The Neurons work my mind?

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, etc. The coffee signal has just gone up, and I must respond. Have a Happy Labor Day, if it applies to you. If not, have a happy day. Here’s Tony and the girls. Cheers

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Thursday’s Theme Music

The bers landed early this morning, while most of us pursued sleep. First of these is September, harbinger of seasonal changes and falling leaves in much of the northern half of our planet. South of zero, spring is shaping up.

It’s Thursday the First, 2022. Long may she rule, but it’ll likely be just twenty-four hours. We have another hot flash with poor air in store for us in my valley. Probably a 99 F high. Our air is purple on the chart, with a reading of 187 attached to it and a warning not to prolong your time outside. It’s 21 C right now, which would normally be pleasant, but this smoke is trapping the heat. Can you say stifling?

With all this, sunrise was surprisingly clear and pleasant at 6:36 AM, the sort of rising sun that makes you smile in appreciation of life and the world. Night’s duties commence at 7:45 PM. Last night’s sunset was a hot furnance red display. The biggest difference about the dwindling daylight hours with its later sunrise and earlier sunset is that it’s a more abrupt transition. Whereas in May through July, it’s quite light before the dawn and stayed light a bit after sunset, darkness more frequently prevails in those hours.

The smoke has not given the sun protection that I thought, only shaving off one degree from the high temps of the last several days. Two fires are spooning this smoky flow into us, one in California, and Oregon’s Rum Creek fire, less than an hour away on I-5.

The Neurons are enthusiastic about “Pumped Up Kicks” this morning. They’re not forthcoming about their reasoning. I suspect it’s a byproduct of reading the news. PUK by Foster the People was released in 2010. It’s a dark song against a pop beat about a human with a gun shooting others for the fun, because of how it makes them feel.

An unusual song. Stay positive and test negy, and do what you can. I will do the same as soon as sufficient coffee is imbibed to satisfy The Neurons. Here is la song. Cheers

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Something crashed into me. Once mental equilibrium was restored, I raged, “What happened.” Looking around, I discovered that I’d been hit by Wednesday. Right in the middle of the week, too. Examining it in the mirror, I admired a developed welt and darkening contusion. Wednesday was leaving a mark. That’s how life goes for Day Hunters. Sometimes they strike back.

This is August 31, 2022, which happens to be September Eve. Naturally, I’m gonna dress up and party, as my tribe has done since they first illuminated recorded history.

Sunrise broke night’s grip on the valley at 6:35 AM. Night fled but vowed to return at 7:47 tonight. I admired his willingness to express such a specific time in this day of vague promises. It’s a lovely 21 C right now, but Purple Air says wildfire smoke from Rum Creek to the northwest and another blaze in California pours a blend into the air that makes it red, 148, and unhealthy for sensitive folks. That must include me. I’m zinging sneezes and coughs to beat the band (an expression that seems very confusing and leaves me wondering about its origins). Eyes are teary and the nostrils are smarting. So, I’ll take precautions, y’all, if I were me, which I think I am.

The Neurons have plucked a Stevie Wonder song out of the 1965 memory cells and loaded it into the morning mental music stream. I always loved the energy of “Uptight (Everything Is Alright)”. Knowing this, following a successful writing expedition which naturally also rendered me anxious (does this work or am I fooling myself?), The Neurons kicked the song on in a game effort to reassure me.

Over to you, Jim. Here’s the music. I’m setting off into the kitchen’s darkest corners in a quest to find a cup of hot, black coffee. Come at your own peril if you wish. Stay positive, test negy, and so on. Don’t look know, my fellow Americans, but Labor Day weekend is rising out of the calendar’s murky depths. Cheers

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Gonna be a hundred F here today, they tell us. I’m doubtful. Rum Creek smoke fills the air, making it unhealthy to breath, but it also blocks the sun and cools the air. I don’t think it’ll go over 95, 96 F today. It’s now 20 C.

After much discussion among replay officials, they’ve concluded that this is Tuesday, August 30, 2022. When I typed that 3-0, The Neurons said, “That ain’t right, is it?” But the replay officials say it’s so, so let’s move on, and play ball. First down.

Happy sunshine sneaked over the eastern mountains and winked through the leaves at 6:34 AM and will take its light and heat and stalk off, probably in a deep red glow, given this smoke, at 7:48 PM. The sun’s light comes through different windows now as the Earth’s relationship with the sun shifts via orbital mechanics. The eastern windows see less sunshine as the sun treks into our southern sky. By the time winter has arrived, we won’t see sunshine through most of the eastern windows.

I’d like to pause to mention folks in Mississippi, coping with their flooding, along with Pakistan. Here’s a call out, too, for the people around the Rum Creek fire here in Oregon, and for those enduring power outages from storms in the U.S. Midwest and South. Send positive energies to these people and places if you can, however you manifest it.

Music – that’s why we’re here, innit? – in the morning mental music stream is “You Only Get What You Give” by the New Radicals, circa 1998. The Neurons, putting their whimsy in the display case, plunked the song into the M3S after I struggled to remember a dream. The dream keeps poking its head out but whenever I shout — mentally or figuratively, right? — “There it is”, the dream ducks out of sight. Maddening. Perhaps after I’ve had coffee…

Better go get some. Duty calls. Stay posi, test negy, and so on. Here’s the music. Sing along if you know it. Cheers

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Mewsday’s Theme Music

The Tucker floof awoke me with song at an early time. “Get up, get up, it’s time to eat. Get up, get up, no time to sleep. Get up, get up, feed me some food. Get up, get up, or I’ll keep up this tune.”

Which he did. So I did. That makes this Mewsday.

The sky crashed down on his last night. Well, starting just after two in the afternoon, winds shifted, bringing the Rum Creek fire‘s smoke right down the I-5 corridor, changing the color of our air quality indicators from green to red like a traffic signal at work. Although it looks and smells better today, we’re at 152, red, and not good. Actually, the peculiarities of the narrowing valley and slope that I live on brings the air quality down to a more endurable 105. A wind shift can take that away, making us like the rest of the city.

Sunrise was a mellow and uneventful period at 6:33 AM. Sunset cometh at 7:50 PM. Cool 54 F now but a high of 34 C is on deck.

Got a Tom Petty song in mind. Heard it on the radio the other day. The Neurons said, “We like this,” and kept it on as background music in the mental music stream since. The song is “Leave Virginia Alone”. I remember hearing the Rod Stewart version back in 1995. Didn’t move me deeply. I was unaware that Tom Petty wrote it, learning that later, when he covered it himself. It sounds more like a Tom Petty style song than a Rod vehicle to me.

Okay, where is the coffee, please? The cats have abandoned me. Tucker is silent and coffee is needed. Stay positive, test neggy, etc. Have a good Monday, whatever that means on your spectrum. Here’s the song. A little mellow for a coffee-less Monday to my ears but it makes The Neurons happy. Cheers

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Sunday’s Theme Music

It’s about 17 C outside. Minute haze dulls the blue sky’s purity. My wife looks out and says, “I wish it would stay like this for a month.” Welcome to Sunday, August 28, 2022.

It won’t stay like this today. 90 F is expected as a high. The sun showed up this AM at 6:32 and will vacate our sky at 7:52 tonight as the length of daylight continues shrinking. I do miss the ocean and beach where we spent last week. Oh, that lovely air, and the glory of hearing the ocean and watching waves hurry in and crash and then drift away. We had no sinus issues there, whereas we began experiencing sinus blockages and postnasal drip when we were still a hundred miles from home. Today brings me full stoppage and the need to blow a few times.

The Neurons are feeding Echosmith and “Cool Kids” (2013) into the morning mental music stream. I don’t know the course that brought the song in. I suspect it emerged from a spectrum of thoughts and slivers of quicksilver dreams at once reflective and amusing. I was a cool kid. Just sayin’, that’s how I was often described. When I pressed why that was used to describe me, people said, as the song says, that I seemed to get it. Yet, I had issues, loads of family matters, though not as heavy as many endure. At least I had shelter and food security. Nobody was abusing me.

Of course, I sang a slighter different version as I pet my orange buddy, the little ginger bear known as Papi. I sang, “I wish that I could be like the cool cats because all of the cool cats get all the kibble.” Papi was too cool to respond beyond disdain. It’s his standard M.O.

The coffee has landed. Stay positive, test negative, and so on. Dream your dream and pursue your hopes. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Saturday’s Theme Music

When they finally broke through to the other side and the dust cleared, they found a material world with many boulevards of broken dreams. No matter; it was Saturday, August 27, 2022. They had that going for them, if nothing else.

It’s overcast in my swath of the world. Though the day advanced with the sun cresting the eastern mountains at 6:31 AM, the sun’s warmth is remote and oblique. 18 C now, we expect 83 F to be the temperature’s peak. Night will take over at 7:53 this evening, when the sun ‘moves on’ as the world turns.

For music, The Neurons are plying the morning mental music stream with a song from Peter Gabriel. Named “Blood of Eden”, you might expect it to be an energetic, uplifting, hard rocker. Surprisingly, it’s not. (Yes, you correctly detected snark. Good for you. You must have already had coffee.) I’ve always been a Peter Gabiel fan. This 1983 song was another one which prompted me to listen carefully as my brain asked, “Wait, what’s he saying?” The Neurons restored the song to active presence in my mind after overhearing an older man and woman chatting over coffee. He said in response to her reply, “She said that she can’t afford the insurance.” And while my brain remained engaged on its task, The Neurons took up that line and hooked it up with the “Blood of Eden” lyric, “I cannot get insurance anymore. They don’t take credit, only gold.” That’s just how The Neurons play.

My coffee is at hand. I wasn’t always a coffee drinker. Didn’t start that until around fifth, sixth grade, while visiting a friend’s house. We had the same first name, Michael, although he was a Mike. People habitually said, here’s Michael and Mike, or M and M. Mike used to have coffee with a lot of sugar and cream. I only drank it this way a few times, always at his house. When our compasses took us in different directions, I quit drinking coffee and didn’t resume until I was twenty and in the military. Even then, I was only an occasional imbiber of the black brew, usually on midnight shifts. I became a regular drinker when I went off shifts and became the Training NCO. My boss would come in each morning and say, “Let’s go get coffee.” That’s where the habit really developed for me. That was at Kadena on Okinawa, after I’d been there a few years, so I was twenty-seven. My relationship with coffee blossomed. By the time I reached Germany a few years later, I was identified as a hard-core coffee drinker.

BTW, the coffee was bought at an Army & Air Force Exchange Services cafeteria upstairs from the command post where I worked. It cost ninety cents.

Stay positive and test negative. Take care of your family, community, tribe, and self. Here’s the music. Cheers

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