a stomach flu cost me about a day and a half, and forced me to fold about halfway through today and give up shop. shouldn't teach under conditions like this, but rescheduling is such a hassle, sometimes i'll tolerate, just to get by it. in the couple days of the new term, summer kicked in; had to use aircon; had to get used to the blasts of warm/cool air at the thresholds of both buildings and cars; and noticed that, for all intents and purposes, this is the steamy, wet, rain-forest, lawn-mowing, all-green-things-move-forward season of the year here- it dries out pretty well later. A nice summer rain broke out in the evening, and the two-year-old went out to the back porch to experience it- later the older boys went out and caught fireflies (and released them, which is part of the tradition). No sign of the seventeen-year-locusts, though; I'm not sure they venture this far south, but they're due to spring out of their hibernation this year, in more midwestern locales.

i had my band leader & colleague send me the mp3 file of my own banjo song, recorded on our cd, but it blew out my mail program at work. that's how hot it is! or maybe, that's a reflection of how we haven't mastered the art of bundling such things. now i hesitate to pass it along to my friends. i'm not a big file-mover. but it can be said that i own this one- at least there's no chance of someone coming after me for sending it on the public bandwidth. and, this would be nice- it being a train song and all, it would be good to use my son's newer film-editing software, to make a train movie, or a tom movie, since the song is so much of me. i'll put the idea on the table- look at it from all angles- then go off to bed, where i belong, to make up for some more long-lost sleep, and start enjoying the long mem-day holidays...and a happy holiday to all!