Eccentric Flower:199812/wait five minutes itll change
From Eccentric Flower
«December 1998 «Eccentric Flower
 |
seven twelve one wait five minutes, it'll change It is extremely hot today. Well, for December. High sixties. (That's Fahrenheit, for all you overseas types and metric fans in the US - like Nonelvis, who somehow managed to grow up in this country without knowing how to think in cups and quarts and ounces.) People are walking around in shorts, for pity's sake! I tried to leave the house in my coat, which would normally be required - nuh-uh. Even the overshirt I am wearing is too hot. Now, here's the punchline: It may snow tonight. In Louisiana there are two seasons: midsummer and February. OK, that's an oversimplification for humorous effect, but in general it is hot nine months, and rainy and icky for three. Don't forget: Aside from the Everglades, Louisiana is the closest you will get in this country to actual rainforest. It's jungle. Wooden porches decay in a single season. Bugs swarm in black clouds. And the weather, though often obnoxious, is fairly predictable. I'm only now learning to realize that. In Louisiana the big surprise was whether it would rain or not. You might get a five-minute thunderstorm without warning, but the temperatures were pretty regular. Here the rain isn't much of an issue - you can usually see it coming, unlike there - but the temperature fluctuates, and the winds come in and change everything. I have walked outside on a fifty-degree day and felt like my coat was way excessive. I've walked out on the next day - also a fifty-degree day - and gone back inside and put on another layer. The difference is the wind. This isn't exactly a complaint. I like the weather here. It makes life interesting. I just find it amusing that I actually have to devote some thought to a phenomenon of nature which was mostly beneath my notice for most of my life - that I actually have gotten in the habit of checking the paper each morning to try to guess what it's like outside - something I never did in Louisiana, never. - - - No email yet today. Slackers! You have an obligation to shower me with brilliance on a daily basis! (Of course, I was so busy this morning that I didn't post this until one, so perhaps I shouldn't cast stones, eh?) I see that Sam is writing again (and not studying - tsk, tsk), and that the other new Thinking Aloud member, Rodney, has pasted the ring code in. So we have an intact circle once more, and you should go say hello to him too. Thanks to everyone for their suggestions. I'm really happy with these two new gents, and I hope they don't feel like they've moved onto the street with all the weirdos. Now, if you're so good at brainstorming, tell me if you can come up with a good way to publicize Twenty Questions - bearing in mind that it has a budget of exactly zero. Got to tell people it exists, somehow. - - - I was going to try to analyze why a Joe Haldeman story I re-read last night disturbed me so badly, but on second thought I'll wait. By the by, not that you care, but by the time the dust settled on A.D.'s diary this weekend, I had written about eight thousand new words. I expect the total word count of the revision to hit twenty thousand this evening. See what a little self-flagellation can do? I'll be at fifty thousand (which is where I expect it to end up, putting it squarely in the banana republic of Novella) before you know it. © columbine |
