Occurrences

Strange weather yesterday. My county was under a tornado watch from 6 pm until 3 am. Nothing happened that I know of, but it was eerie: periods of ghost-quiet calm alternating with little spatters of rain, flickering lightning, and hastening grey clouds. Oddly warm, too. Sometimes it's hard to remember it's December, because it feels more like early October.

Which reminds me, I planted a few salad greens last week, just to see if they'd take. The mache has sprouted (although the winter lettuce and the arugula haven't), and now there's a nice little fuzzy green row in the garden. It's in good company; there are still fennel and carrot plants there from earlier in the year.

The odometer on my car rolled over to 200,000 miles on my way into town last night.

I bartended at a party and served a bunch of drinks to this guy. He seemed like a nice person and bought round after round for his friends. But you'd think people in the public eye would realize that if they don't tip, it reflects badly on them. I'm just sayin'.

This afternoon, on my way back from the post office, I was temporarily stopped by a chaotic scene in the 25-mile-per-hour school zone just north of Union Point. Two pickup trucks were in the ditch, one on top of the other. The bottom one was upside-down. A crowd was gathering, and a woman ran into the road to pick up a baseball cap. How do you create a disaster like that at 25 miles per hour, I wonder?

Today I got a reminder of one of the best things about my job as a freelance writer. I called a guy on the west coast to make an appointment for an interview, and we got to talking. We chatted for 20 minutes about cities (he and his partner are contemplating a move to Portland), home renovation, traffic, ethnic food, and so on. He turned out to be quite an interesting person. This happens to me every once in a while, mostly on Fridays when people are looking for any excuse to avoid work!

As for me, I just blog when I'm trying to avoid work.