June 1. Good gawd awmighty. Three weeks until the first day of summer.
Where the hell does the time go?
It doesn’t feel very summery, not yet. We’re slathering on the sunscreen when we go out and about, but highs have only reached the mid-70s to mid-80s, which are very much bearable.
Thus, we have no excuses for staying inside to watch Sleepy Joe and Charlie McCarthy make the sausage. We’ll be eating it soon enough.
It all reminds me very little of what we were taught in junior-high civics classes. Or home economics, for that matter.
What it reminds me of is gym class, specifically the shower portion, wherein a jock occasionally would pee surreptitiously on some poor geek’s leg while distracting him with conversation.
The geek was usually so astonished to be having a chat with one of his betters that he didn’t notice the augmented fluids coursing down his calf until the giggling began.
And then he couldn’t do anything about it anyway.
The geek didn’t yet know about the sausage. He still thought it was just something mom put on his plate with the scrambled eggs and toast. He still thought Bob Dylan was just singing a song.
Mad Blog Media 
Tomorrow is my b’day, and 74 drops of hard rain going to fall on me. But, I won’t sit and wonder why, because it don’t matter anyhow. June did come fast this year. We haven’t even had a 100 degree day yet.
Don’t think twice, it’s all right.
Seventy-four? Yous still wet behind the ears, son! One of the guys I ride with on Mondays and occasionally Wednesdays is 82 … and he’s shopping for a new bike. Been riding the same old Trek for about 30 years and wants to adopt one of these newfangled whatchamacallits, with the disco brakes and the thru-axles and the 12 speeds and the ee-lectronical shifting and what have you.
I keep telling him, “Bwah, don’t go messin’ with them flashy bits. You got to dance with the one what brung ya.” But he won’t listen to no 69-year-old whippersnapper.
Just ask him if he wants to own another thing that need a battery or recharging. Talk about a solution where there wasn’t a problem. Electronic shifting is silly.
That’s what I tell all these guys, and anyone else who’ll listen: “These are all answers to questions nobody was asking.”
What’re you gonna do for your birthday? Special meal? Special music? Both?
Meanwhile, holy hell: Arizona gets stingy with the water? About a hunnerd years too late, but still.
I sear they’re trying to turn a bicycle into a Robe Goldberg machine.
Going to lunch at the New Sierra Vista location for Tombstone Brewing with our buddy Mark from Bibleburg. He’s the fellow that worked for 20 plus years at Chinook Books. All the rest of our crew is down with COVID from their Africa (SA, Zimbabwe, and Botswana) trip in May. With sixteen of their own beers on draft, I just might move in! Meanwhile, I have a fairly new guitar to play. I may have mentioned that at the Mad Dog pickle barrel, but I ain’t sure.
O, man, Chinook. I loved that store. That, and the Tattered Cover in Denver, which now has a Bibleburg location not far from where Chinook once sat. Say howdy to Mark for me. I’m sure we’ve crossed paths before.
You enjoying the new guitar? I keep thinking about a flute, and I keep not buying one. I gotta just buck up and do it.
It is a sweet little guitar with a good midrange sound for a spruce topped small body. Probably about the same size as your Roadhouse.
Happy 74th, Pat!
Thanks mi amigo!
Have a great B-day Mr. O’Brien ! One more scoundrel to the north will be tipping a pint to your fine health tomorrow.
I was thinking about you all this week. SoWis had an actual spring. Back and forth from 38 to 72, and good rains. Usu for us has been snow, slush, and mud followed by a hard shift to 85F.
But I digress. I’ve been watching clouds of white pine pollen rolling down the streets this week. Lotsa farmsteads dating from the 1830’s that set them as windbreaks tween the fields, so they’re big strong boys. None on our postage stamp lot, but they have us surrounded. When you rise in the morning you find a yellow layer on everything.
The pollen has been murder this year. At the moment it’s pine, oak, chenopodiaceae, grass, with a sider of the usual particulates. Slap a juniper and a cloud of noxious gas spews forth. My eyes feel like red grapes rolled in Chimayó chile powder.
We don’t know if this is gonna hold but Michigan is pretending it’s Arizona. High 80’s into 90’s with unheard of low humidity. And rain….what rain? Haven’t seen it in weeks. Actually pretty comfy but we had to turn on AC and close windows since the yellow pollen is massive. Normally, we get pollen and then rain takes care of it.
Had a few glasses of Cabernet in honor of POB’s birthday. May there be many more.
Thank you sir! I will take some pix tomorrow and share them with the Paseo del Bosque crew.
No rain? High temps and low humidity? Surely these are, as the Michigander Jim Harrison once wrote, “dire portents of the Last Days.” Better take a few wafers with your wine, cousin.
Meanwhile, up in Crusty County, my man Hal is expecting snow. In June. “57°, going down to 38° tonight,” he told me. This is one of many reasons we no longer live there.
Happy birthday, POB!