I Resent the Intimation That It's Already Fall

It's August, still, but just barely. The mood shifted in my absence, of its own accord, without my assent. Languid late summer gave way to that energetic crackle of the-week-before-classes-start, and I am dimly aware that I ought to buy pencils. The undergraduates are moving in, setting up their dorm rooms, excited for a new semester. I returned to Cambridge to find things pretty much as they were all summer: warm breeze through the window, feet up on the couch, fudgesicles in the freezer. Whatever shift occurred on campus this past week, it left our apartment untouched. Do I forge ahead into the fall semester?  In mood and thought I am still immersed in that easy absence of nervous excitement inherent to summer; there's just a little bit of it left, and shouldn't I do that little bit justice? I'm certain that I'll emerge from this happy summer indolence, make the shift, but it's all too early now. Classes begin August 31st -- appalling -- this year. I think I'll catch up once it's properly September.

In other news, I can't hear anything. I caught a cold while on the Hawaii field trip, and the congestion is awful. My poor little eardrums have been through a cruel Hawaiian altitude wringer -- Kilauea, sea level, Mauna Loa! sea level, Kilauea, sea level, Mauna Kea! sea level etc. etc. repeat. And then I got on an airplane. My ears still haven't popped, and everything sounds dim, distant. Oddly this lack of aural functionality is making it difficult to write -- I feel as though I can't hear my own internal monologue. Head is too stuffy. I'm off to chug some Gatorade and hope that things clear out.

-R.

Hello Blog; Hello World.

Hello blog. 

Hello world.

It's been a while.

I am sitting on my couch again, and am happy to report that I'm back to loving it, in all its old-person flowered fabric and above-the-mean comfort-level glory. If you've never sat on this couch, I do contend that you are missing out. That said, I'm sure that it was these qualities precisely that did annoy me so the last time that I wrote, given that I was in such a mood as to be perpetually annoyed. I cannot offer an explanation for the fact that I have slipped into the circuitous locution and leisurely cadence of a Southern lawyer (please read this paragraph with a suitable drawl), expect perhaps to say that I loved Matlock as a child. It did not occur to me that I fell far outside the intended demographic for that show until much later. Part of me is still waiting to grow up and be Tyler Hudson.

And, a lightning storm. There was a lightning storm in Cambridge, MA last week; it was our allotted aftermath of the tornado-bearing storm that damaged the western part of the state. I was terrified by all the flickering, flashing and rumbling going on, but I wanted to see what it looked like in replay-format, wanted to watch from the immoderate comfort of my couch; safe, later. So I propped up my little point-and-shoot on my windowsill, put it in video-recording mode and pressed Go. Unfortunately the battery only lasted for 4 minutes, but I caught the onset of the storm, and it constitutes a sort of time-integrated view from my window, if you will:

I'd never seen it flicker like that. 

That's all for now, but I promise to write regularly again.
-R.