Summer's flown...

...and the time is right for grumbling in the dark.

Not really. Life is good. We have a new puppy by the name of Kona, a hearty little girl with teeth like needles and happy way with them. She bit my earlobe last week and it took two hours to stop the bleeding. I even tried a clothes pin and that only slowed it down. Lots of veins in your earlobes. Remember that when you go for a home ear-piercing session.

Summer went by slowly because the heat seemed unremitting. Being a Berkeley boy, despite my high desert birth, I like my foggy mornings and sunny afternoons. Here in our inland valley we did get fog, which I worried about because I didn't think they allowed it here in the suburbs. Lo! and Behold! the fog regularly flowed down to us from the ridge along the cut into which they fit the road over to the Bay. Still, when it gets hot here, it stays hot, unlike Berkeley where it cools in the evening. As I get older, I like the cool. Just the way I roll, Baybee!

Summer went by quickly because it was the busiest summer in recent memory. There was one thing after another, and rarely any time to sprawl and let time plod by. I desperately wanted to lounge in my backyard and read, occasionally sipping my drink and breathing deeply through my nose. But no. No, there were birthday parties to attend, a house to clean, relentless organizing. Shit, you could organize until the cows came home and it would still only last a day.

The job provided no rest. Odd how you can look forward to going to work to get a break from the hurly burly of home. It didn't work that way this summer. We're all doing a job and half now. No rest for the wicked. Or even for bureaucrats.