I tend to have my most vivid dreams if I wake up a little before my alarm, and then roll over to sleep for another half hour or so. This morning, the main part of the dream involved trying to get ready for a play I was in, running around to buy props at the last minute, calling people who were late for cast call, the sort of stressful stuff I ( Read more... )

Maroon is one of my favorite colors to wear. A nice, dark redish-purple looks good on me (at least I think so). Poking my nose in my closet reveals two maroon tank tops, two button-down shirts, one sweater, a pair of pants, and two pairs of underwear ( Read more... )

So, currently the Southwest is undergoing a heat wave with temperatures in the hundreds. Here in South Florida temperatures are averaging in the mid nineties, but with heat indexes 105-110. That's hot. That's not only hot, but disgustingly hot, hot like the armpit of hell. When Arizona is really hot it is like the broiler of hell, but here it is ( Read more... )

Starting just before dawn, and continuing for a few hours after the sun is up, the dragonflies have a party on the dike. I'm not sure what they're celebrating (besides the sun coming up, which is reason enough I suppose), but there are thousands of them partying 5-10 feet above the ground, discoing to the music of their buzzing wings ( Read more... )

It is ramping up toward the start of the rainy season here in South Florida, which means a 50% chance of thunderstorms pretty much every afternoon. I enjoy this because a good thunderstorm not only cools things down, but also forces us off the lake during the heat of the afternoon (a tall metal boat on a flat lake in a thunderstorm is not a very ( Read more... )

This is a slightly belated mother's day post in honor of good parents (male and female) everywhere. Good parents such as the least bittern. When we walk through a colony of birds, the herons and egrets are out of there as soon as they hear us coming, leaving their little ones crying piteously or attempting to climb out of the nest to escape the ( Read more... )

It's true what they say, scent is linked to memory more strongly than any other sense. I had two interesting incidents recently where this was driven home for me with a sledgehammer. I was paddling around the little apartment pool when one of the ladies sunbathing at its edge lit a cigarette. The waft of smoke mixed with the pool-chlorine took me ( Read more... )

Anyone who knows me well, knows I like mornings. Except for a brief period in high school where I would sleep in until (gasp!) 9:00am, I have always been an early riser. The morning is mine, all mine, as the sun sparkles off freshly laid dew, and even the dark of pre-dawn is so much quieter and friendlier than the sinister post-dusk blackness. ( Read more... )

The swallow-tailed kite is God's bird.

The backs of its wings reflect the blue of the sky when you look at them from above, but only God can see them from above.

That is why it is God's bird.

The heat broke last night like an heirloom vase on a table during a 4-year-olds game of tag. It broke like an ipod in a washing machine. It broke like a a cookie in a box entrusted to the US postal service. It broke like a hard drive just before exam week. It smashed like a stained glass window under the influence of a baseball. The swinger of this ( Read more... )