the late-night milk run is pretty common around here, what with a house of four boys besides myself, two grown, if we don't get a gallon a day we fall behind pretty quickly. and that's not to mention toothpaste and all the other stuff we can run out of. i used to go towards town, to a busy store, but one night that store was having a confrontation, police involved, and i kind of soured on it, and started going out the other way, outside of town a couple of miles, to the new walmart. now that place is at an odd location, but to get there you go through this rural but crowded neighborhood where there are lots of houses, way overgrown trees, and the road curves around an old cemetery.

i have to watch my driving right at that cemetery, because people come flying down that road, and i'm always wanting to crane my neck to see what the gravestones say. they say there used to be a town out there somewhere, and the electric car line that went from carbondale to murphysboro actually stopped there, and i heard someone say once that the they thought the town was called murdale. this could be possible since the west-side shopping strip-mall is still called murdale, and so is the power company, or maybe water, for that area. but i see no sign of electric car line out there; i've found very little to verify whatever i heard so long ago. i've taken to slowing down out there, just so i see mroe, but slowing down is a good idea anyway since there are lots of deer, and i want to live longer.

it was a gorgeous day, cool in the morning, but sunny and hot in the day, and very clear and fresh; farmers' market was full of fresh and colorful fruit & vegetables including some wild-colored plum that i'd never seen; i bought lots of stuff but failed to buy any plums, and now i regret it. i also played a gig, folkstravaganza! XI, though i may have that name wrong, this would have been friday night, and so i've been a bit tired this weekend, trying to recover from a huge start-of-semester rush. at the gig, the local folk coffeehouse, we were called (by someone) the "local yokel" talent but i guess that's really pretty true; most of us are just playing the area, as we always do; my partner plays every song she's written all year, and this is good; she writes a lot, and people come to hear them. the rest of the day we stay home and avoid the crowds. at night, it rains and turns steamy, so we avoid our run; it's so bad, it's back to summer again, and the steam rises up where there is grass and even near the graveyard. you could call it 110% humidity; it's a front, where the dry western fall air has been pushed aside by whatever steamy gulf current that replaced it; it's so steamy here, i'll probably put everything aside, go to bed, and hope it's a little cooler when i wake up. but, i kind of like the feeling- being on the cusp of steamy summer/nice fall; on the cusp of new term/old term, and out on the wild roads where the trees are overgrown, and only cemetery seems ok with the enormous mystery of it all. or maybe everyone knows, and i just talk with the wrong people. in any case, it's summer again; it's due to be hot for a while, and stay that way no doubt, and we might as well get used to it, again. best way to deal with this stuff is go to bed early, get some sleep, wake up early enough to run while the fog is still sitting, lifting off the soccer fields, before it's burned off by the clear fall sun. somewhere out there in the ocean, it's hurricane season, and i'm glad i'm not experiencing it; instead, little frogs jump across the road because the small shower has steamed up the place and they can't tell the road from anything else out there. i'll go around them if i can; i can only imagine what they were thinking.