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This afternoon I heard thunder so loud it shook the old metal cart I was pushing across the street. “Oh Shit”, raindrops big as golf balls splat! on the pavement. There’s trouble everywhere I go; I’m halfway kidding about not coming back, but I’m halfway not kidding, too.

I work too much, I know; I am my mother’s daughter. At work I feel productive; at home I feel lazy, mundane, and alone. Yesterday I talked with the wandering flute player; he kept saying “work is totally overrated!” and rambled on about overthrowing the IRS and a tv for every home.

There is a definite temperature change while walking home, as the elevation rises. I notice the sweat on my arms turning to mist, take a deep breath full of fog instead of dripping humidity.

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There’s one thing I can say about John Denver, and that thing is this: I always end up bawling when I listen to him. I imagine it will be that way until I die. He envokes such a feeling of being young – back when I was a little tiny kid my dad would play the guitar and sing For Baby to me, and “Annie’s Song” to my mom, and they would play John Denver records and we were a happy little family. I went home this Christmas, and my dad played his guitar with his old shaky fingers and sang with his voice cracking and my mom cried and cried and I cried a little bit, too. I’m so far removed from them now, and I can’t do anything to fix it, but I sure would like to sometimes.

I guess I’ll finish watching the rest of this PBS special, and maybe sooner or later I’ll run out of tears.

OK, I’m glad I vented here instead of directly to TheLandlord. The electrician is coming back out today, to change the fuse box to a breaker box, and to put the dryer on its own circuit. AND, he said that when we were ready to buy another dryer he could get is wholesale price on one through a local dealer.

So, it’s all turning out okay.

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This apartment’s electricity is all fucktified. It went out on Saturday due to large amounts of rain (not lightning). Yesterday it went out when we ran the dryer and the stove at the same time (and everything stayed off – including the a/c – until this morning). And now that our electricity is back on, our dryer doesn’t work.

Of course, our landlord didn’t send an electrician over on Sunday night after we called him, because he said that the electrician said it was probably the outside line (although I imagine he just didn’t want to pay the weekend rates for the electrician). This made for a, shall we say, uncomfortable night and morning, until the electrician got here and replaced something in the fusebox. And it’s, of course, our fault that our dryer no longer works, even though it was working when the fuse blew. The electrician was nice enough to tell us that we should only run one of the following at a time:

• air conditioner
• stove
• dryer

Which is awesome, because who in their right mind would want to run the stove and the a/c at the same time during an Alabama summer? Agh, I’m so annoyed. And looking for a dryer.

In other news, Pele is super happy that the a/c is working again.

• No prison time? Wtf? So Clinton can be impeached for lying on the stand, but it’s okay for Bush to commute the sentence of someone who lied on the stand? From now on I’m going to assume that any Bush administration official who is subpoenaed and called to testify before Congress can lie freely, because if they are found guilty Bush will commute their sentence. What a terrible precedent. What a terrible president.
• So far, so good. While Scrushy’s wife may call it the “worst day for America”, the fact that Richard Scrushy and Don Sieglman (former governor of Alabama) are sitting in the federal pen is NotABadThing.
• To the lady whose dog I had to sprint away from this morning: If you dog is named ‘BIG BOY’, that’s a pretty good indication that you should not be walking him without a leash.
• To everyone else: I’ve found the secret to speed work: there’s nothing like a big black rotweiller/lab mix chasing after you to make you go FASTER.
• I’m going to run the Vulcan 10K this year instead of just taking pictures. I need a goal, and so there it is. I’m re-working my life, but that’s a post for another day.
• The Bright Eyes song “Cleanse” off the new(er) release Cassadaga is fantastic. lyrics.
• The GreatRoadTripOf2007 is planned out (at least, as much as we want it to be). Emily and I will be going through Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. We’re camping most of the time, but staying in a few B&B and hotels along the way. This will complete my goal of exploring each of the lower 48 states (some more than others) before I turn thirty. We’ll be gone two weeks, with lots of photographs and lobster and outdoor adventure. I look forward to not checking my email the entire time.
• Can I visit all seven continents before I’m 50? I sure hope so.