Of course it’s hot and humid today. It’s summer. It’s a bit hotter than usual, but not hotter than EVAH!11!1! And it looks like it will continue to be hot here for a while…
Did my thing yesterday. Met with people and shared our common interests. We’re counting down the days until our regional tradeshow/swapmeet/convention, and our pre-registration numbers are stronger than last year. There was talk about people still coming out of their covid ‘shell’…which is frankly amazing to me. We’ve been back to “normal” for long enough I find it hard to remember when we weren’t. I’m not sure what I feel for the people who are still living under the cloud of the chinese bioweapon, sadness? Pity? Both mixed together with a dash of disbelief? I hope they come to Texas and see how they could be living again.
After that I loaded up the truck and headed to the BOL. And when I got here it was HOT. The wind was blowing and it felt like leaning into an oven. I was going to mow, but decided to take the dog for a walk and see my friend the fisherman, and take a look at the work he’s been doing on his house. We ended up sitting in the air conditioning and chatting for a couple hours. I’ll mow today. Meatspace.
Made my dinner and went down to the dock. It was still in the low 90s and the lake wasn’t feeling cool, but sitting still in the gentle breeze wasn’t too bad. The sky was a bit hazy, but the Milky Way was out, and there was the tail end of this week’s meteor shower to look for. I saw a couple dozen shooting stars, about half were dim and short, but almost a dozen were really bright and long ones. One I could see go from white streak to orange red as it broke up. Really pretty nice.
That kept me down there past my cigar, listening to the radio and watching the sky. WRMI Legends, playing all the hits of rock and roll from the last several decades. They even do “instant requests” playing stuff the audience picks from their song library through the website. Shortwave radio on 9.455Mhz. Their playlist is very eclectic. The DJ was in a mellow mood last night, but where else can you hear “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia”, “Cat’s in the Cradle”, “the Tracks of my Tears”, “Rag Doll”, and dozens of others in the same hour? Fleetwood Mac to Bobby Darin? I love the serendipity of radio. After 50 plus years of listening to popular music, there was very little I couldn’t sing along to, and very few songs that I wasn’t happy to hear.
Serendipity plays a big part in my life. I need something and it shows up in the auctions. I need a job, and someone who knows someone I know gives me a call… I get back in touch with a girl I knew because of an email address on a fund raising appeal that was cc’d to me and I end up married to her… Stuff that pushes the bounds of probability happens to me all the time. Serendipity and synchronicity. It’s a charmed life now, but it wasn’t always. I can appreciate it now, knowing how it used to be.
And I want it to continue, to see where it all leads, but there are people and forces who want to bring it all down. We don’t get to choose when we live, or what happens in the world, but we do get to choose how we respond. I choose to get through whatever is coming, and to see what the next era looks like. My grandmother saw the birth of manned flight, and men landing on the Moon. I can’t predict what my kids will see but I want it to be more than flickering shadows on the walls of our ruined civilization. So I prep, to give them the best start in whatever comes next.
You can too. Stack it up.
nick