Mild

Clouds appeared and vanished tonight. They were of the sort that look like the tread marks of tires (or tyres, when they appear over England), but I couldn't see them clearly, as they never got near the part of the heavens where the blithe summer moon sailed. There was only a vague, rumpled look to the dark sky, and an absence of stars. I watched for a while, the outdoors being far more pleasant than the rooms of the house, which remain sultry even with all the windows open. Eventually, the stars reappeared, from southwest to northeast. The clouds have gone off to hover over the mountains.

Maybe there will be thunderstorms to dampen the high forests, or to set them alight. Fire season has already begun south of the Tehachapis. It usually doesn't arrive here until a month or two later. Little was burned nearby last year, and the rainy spring has brought additional growth of brush. There is considerable potential for a bad local fire year. In such a year as this, I'm glad that I now only have one cat to look after. When there were four, I couldn't imagine how I would ever be able to round them all up in the event of an evacuation.

But there are no fires tonight. The air has even begun to smell a bit damp. I've let the cat out into the dim light which has begun to reveal the empty street, the dark houses, the details of the trees and bushes, the individual boards of fences, and the first hint of color in the flowers. In mild weather, she likes to spend the hour before the town awakes outside, examining the traces left by passing raccoons and stray tom cats, and unnerving the early-rising birds. That cat would be quite displeased if she had to live in a place where she couldn't be allowed outside. In an hour or so, I'll find her napping in a chair on the back porch, waiting to be let in for breakfast, before a hard day of further napping, indoors and out of the heat. Summer is a good season for an indulged cat. I wish I liked it as much.

One More Thing

Via sixapartnews comes this article in the Wall Street Journal about how marketing researchers are monitoring the blague-o-sphere in order to mine it for unfiltered opinions on their clients' products. It will be interesting to see how this business develops, and what additional widgets they come up with to make it more attractive to the companies which subscribe to their services.

I wonder how long before somebody comes up with clever ways of messing with them? When somebody does, I'm in! For now, my feeling is sort of like, well, Big Brother is Watching, but he turns out to be a bit simple, so, not to worry. Silly marketing majors.

Dusk

This early in the warm season, I have not yet gotten into the habit of making iced tea before dinner, so by the time I remember, it's too late. So, I'm sitting here in the warm evening with a cup of hot tea. One great advantage of being a creature of habit is that you don't have to waste a lot of attention on trivial things, as they have become automatic. One of the great disadvantages is that you develop a lot of inertia. That makes it difficult to adjust to changes of any sort. Well, habit has become my habit, and I'm unlikely to abandon it. I just wish I'd remembered to make some iced tea this afternoon.

Some kids are playing basketball somewhere in the neighborhood. I hear the distant shouts, and the thwack of the ball on the pavement, and, faintly, the thump of the ball against the backboard. The light is almost gone, but they continue their game. The days are not getting longer anymore. I know why the game continues. I remember being reluctant to let the last bit of a summer evening's light go unused. We would continue playing far into the gloaming, until we were little more than flickering shadows of ourselves, guiding our movements as much by sound as by sight. There were streetlights where we lived, but they were dim and far apart, and frequently broken by local vandals. Eventually, it would grow so dark that we would be forced to stop, and each return to our lighted houses. The ends of the day then would leave me with such a sense of melancholy that I sometimes wonder how I ever become nocturnal, and now welcome the arrival of darkness.

Oh, the game has stopped. There are goodbye calls and the sound of a door loudly closing. I don't hear a parent shouting Don't slam the door! The night has fallen silent, except for the chirping crickets and the occasional hum of a car passing along the main road. Empathy or memory brings a fleeting trace of that old melancholy, but it is extinguished by the anticipation of moonlight and stars and the impending departure of the day's heat. You're only young once, thank goodness.