No Thinking

Thuggish neighbor kept riding his noisy little clown bike up and down the block last evening, but I fell into a fitful sleep anyway. When I finally woke, the last of sunset was fading, and a cluster of clouds in the northwest was like a vast purple bruise, red at the center.

My headache actually went away for a few hours after the nap. The heat in the house did not. It's still here, in fact, and the headache is back. Today is another head-yanking day, but not until five o'clock this evening. I'd like to sleep the entire time, but I won't be able to. I'll wake after five hours or so-- unless I drown in my own sweat, of course. That's looking like an attractive option.


I went to search for something on Teh Interwebs and accidentally discovered this page containing an article from a 1909 issue of The Los Angeles Examiner in which a proposal to turn a long stretch of the Los Angeles River into a lake is revealed. I found it interesting partly because I recall a similar proposal being made in the early 1980's. Neither proposal came to anything, of course. I like the illustration accompanying the Examiner article, though. The idea of a riverfront parkway with trains running through it seems quaint at this late date, as do the optimistic puffs of smoke rising from what must be factory chimneys in the adjacent neighborhoods. Who sees cities that way anymore? I sometimes think that a trip to early 20th century America would reveal a world more strange than would a trip to any early 21st century city on the other side of the world.


Computer off and lights out before my head explodes.

Suffer

The clouds are beautiful, but evil. Dawn revealed them extending to every horizon, so dark and thick that I expected there might be a summer storm. Rumor has it that a few sprinkles fell while I slept, but all I experienced was the oppressive humidity they brought. Though they deflected some of the sun's heat, the afternoon was still hot, and the clouds thinned enough by three o'clock to permit full sunlight to fall upon the lower air which rapidly became unbearable. Even now, with the last of the pink light fading from the remaining clouds, stepping out the door is more like entering a busy foundry than a forest. I'm not at all sorry to see this day end-- except for the likelihood that tomorrow may be worse.


My head has been readjusted a bit more, but at the moment I can't feel any improvement. One disadvantage of the current position of things is that my jaw won't open wide enough for me to put a full-thickness sandwich between my teeth. I'd say I've got about half an inch of clearance before serious pain sets in. That severely limits my food options. If it gets much worse, I'll have to go onto a liquid diet. Oh, wait. Taht means I could go on a beer diet! Maybe I'll stop worrying about it getting worse.