Give Me Ice

Yesterday morning, I went to bed about six o'clock. I used two blankets. Within half an hour, I began to feel cold, so I got another blanket. Another half an hour, I woke at the sound of a passing car and realized that I was too cold again. A fourth blanket ensued, and was sufficient. My house is perverse. It stays hot all night and gets cold after down. According to all those movies about hauntings, ghosts are supposed to cause the temperature to drop. I need a ghost in my house. I could keep it on the shelf where I currently have a useless printer Sluggo no longer recognizes. It would be the perfect solution. The problem is acquiring a ghost. Ghosts tend to avoid me, probably because I don't believe in them. I'm willing to believe in them if they prove their existence by haunting Sluggo's desk. This is an open invitation to all ectoplasms: Come haunt me!

There is a black widow spider in my garage. The bold little bugger has built a web from a laundry basket to the dryer. I tried to kill it (the black widow being almost the only arachnid I'm willing to squash) but it was too quick for me, and scurried into a sheltered spot next to the water heater. I'm on the verge of using insecticide on it. There will be war!

Other than the discovery of the venomous spider, the night passed uneventfully. No deer, no owls, no raccoons, not even a scent of skunk. The round moon shone brightly on a dull world, wasting its romantic light. This makes me sad. I should like to have seen nymphs and satyrs copulate on my lawn. Life is far less interesting than I can imagine it being. Also, the heat is getting to me. I calculate that my brain will melt in three more days, unless cooler weather intervenes. I think I'll throw some more stuff out. It's the only activity by which I am pleased anymore. It all just collects heat, anyway.

Gasp

A breeze has risen, making the hot air feel deceptively cool. Clouds are forming, too, suggesting a change in the weather. They might bring cooling later, but tonight their most likely effect will be to hold the day's heat longer. I am no happier than Sluggo.

The black widow in the garage has been slaughtered. I discovered a second one nearby, and attempted to deal with it the same way, but it may have escaped. I was unable to find the cadaver. The creature may be hiding in some cranny, waiting to take its revenge on me. The garage badly needs cleaning.

I am about to unearth a place long concealed behind stacks of books in which old magazines are stored. I am in hopes that a publication I have long missed is there. It is a copy of a long defunct magazine called Creative Art which was published in 1928 or so. It is an issue devoted to prognostications about architecture in New York City, and contains some splendid drawings by a number of the architects who were working in the city at the time. If I find it, I'll try to get some scans done somewhere (as I have no scanner myself) and post a few of the drawings.

Now, post and go away before Sluggo shows me the blue screen of his extreme displeasure.