Precip

The drizzle is cold on my skin. Summer temps in the Arizona-Sonoran Desert exceeded 140 degrees Fahrenheit (in the sun) during summer months. The signal that Fall has arrived is falling on, and cooling the desert. Transformations are forthcoming from flora and fauna. Dusty gulches will gulp Nature's elixir, even flow with it. The desert has changed masks, will again become life-giving instead of life-taking.

[Twenty-seven minutes after this was posted online, I received the phone call that Jack--my brother, my hero--was dead.]

Double Take

It’s an understatement to say Craig wasn’t happy Marilyn was going to her sister’s, leaving him stuck at home to answer the door for trick-or-treaters on Halloween night.

About quarter-to-ten, he dumped the last of the candy bars into pre-teens’ pillow cases and sacks and promptly closed the drapes and turned off the porch light to signal he had had just about enough.

The bell sounded again about 11:45 and he opened the door with purpose only to find nothing but an orange and black Halloween bag in the vestibule.

He looked around and--seeing no child--stooped and had only raised the bag 6 inches from the concrete when he saw a severed human hand at the bottom, dropped the gory find and lurched to vomit on the grass.

Police assured him they were enroute and, when dispatch asked if it was a man’s or woman’s hand, Craig dared to take only the quickest glance, but long enough to recognize the ring he’d given Marilyn on the hand he had taken in marriage.

I Was One of THOSE Commuters This Morning

So the new car has such a fabuloso sound system that there are door-mounted tweeter speakers in front. There must to be 8 or more speakers in the stylin' new Joemobile.

So I made a 90-song mp3 disc for the car and road-tested it this morning.

I was in chair-dancing bliss.

Bill Withers’ “Lovely Day” piped up and I seat-danced with my assivo-massivo pounding the leather oblivious to odd looks from other commuters.

Forget that the volume was deafening and I was singing along at the tops and bottoms of my lungs, arms flailing fluidly and flawlessly to the beat and, yes, occasionally extending out of the open sunroof on this rainy day.

For my entire, 25-minute commute, twas Bill and I, over and again, until I exited my car at the workplace with an explicable smile and spring in my step.