Reunionizing

I wrote 1,400 words on the topic of reunions yesterday morning and was just getting warmed up when I realized several things: it was already 10 a.m., my theoretical start time for work; I was over my word limit and still hadn’t made my point, whatever that might have been; and it’s very difficult to […]

Feeling the Heat

Some day in June, I walked into my bank, sweat trailing in my wake, only to encounter Heather, a teller, in her winter coat. Her work station is right under the opening for the air conditioning, and it blasts down on her all day, so she freezes while the rest of us swelter. The bank […]

The Least Among Us

It is with a profound sense of relief that I report to you all that I have been excused from jury duty by dint of cancellation of the trial that was scheduled for next Monday. I maybe wasn’t supposed to do this, but I looked at the court docket last week and know the defendant […]

Loose Threads

Okay, it is not for lack of trying, although you do not know that. You only see an empty space in your inbox where my blog belongs, and you assume, knowing me, that I am slacking. And so I am, but I am also struggling, and instead of trying to pretend everything is fine I […]

When It Rains, It Pours

Right after a whole week or two of practically unbearable heat, although apparently Lynn thinks it’s just starting to get warm at 90 degrees and Kara and Vann are quite capable of sitting in an 85-degree room at work thinking they are pleasantly cool, and right after the county implemented Stage 1 fire restrictions, it […]

Computations

This is coming to you from a new computer. That is not a boast; far from it. If the world would have allowed it, I would likely still be on one of my early computers, pieces of which are still here in this house, along with the remnants of now at least three other computers […]

For the Ages

So it’s hot. And dry. Dry and hot. Lest you think we are unique, here in Gunnison, this is the situation pretty much everywhere in the American West. Hot and dry, just waiting for the fires that are bound to happen. Some fires have already erupted, but a meteorologist a couple weeks ago showed last […]

Bad Ju-joules

Electricity must be a wild thing, right, like a mustang, something Benjamin Franklin grabbed hold of and broke to harness for the greater good of mankind? Or most mankind. Just not me, bedeviled by this modern-day necessity. One of my friends named Bruce, an early adopter of solar power, once talked about how we take […]

Turning a Page

It was my turn to work the Saturday shift at Pat’s yesterday, and the task I set for myself was to try to bring some semblance of order to the used books in the overstuffed sausage of our storage area. We’ve been selling some books without refilling the holes on the shelves, and if I […]

No Excuse

Oxygen: can’t live without it, although one man doesn’t care if I try. Uncle Shel Silverstein has a poem, I think it’s called “Sick Note,” wherein the narrator lists all the reasons she can’t go to school that day — only to learn it’s Saturday. Miraculously, all the complaints disappear and she heads out to […]