Just to update you, Dear Reader, it never reached 113 as we feared on June 20. It only got to 111, so we dodged that bullet. The only problem is that it’s been 111 ever since. In fact, it’s been 112 a couple of times. It’s 112 right now. The forecast for July 4 is 117, according to the Arizona Republic. They were wrong before. Let us pray they’re wrong again. Even if they are correct about 117 degrees on Wednesday, they are forecasting a cool-off thereafter, down to 112-113 again.
Why, you may wonder, would anybody live in such heat? I wonder that myself, every year about this time. By August, I’ll will have made a solemn vow not to live here one more year. Then October will come, and the winter, and rather like childbirth, I’ll be so pleased with what I’ve got I will have forgotten what I had to go through to get there.
I get weather reports from my sibs in Oklahoma and southern Missouri about the Biblical rains they’ve been having. My sister in Joplin had an inch of water in the basement apartment of her house, where her son and his wife live. The creek didn’t rise and they didn’t have a flood thereabouts – just too darn much rain all at once. At least I don’t have to mop the sunshine up off my carpet with a towel. All our relatives in the Denver area are sitting in the catbird seat, right now. (What made me think of that old saying? It means that they’re feeling pretty proud of themselves, for those of you who are woefully young.)
Yesterday, I received a package from the Oklahoma Department of Libraries containing a 2007-2008 Oklahoma Almanac and a silver medal for coming in second in the “Oklahoma Reads Oklahoma” Centennial Reading Project last year with The Old Buzzard Had It Coming There was a section in the Almanac about all the chosen books, including an entry for Buzzard. The book is now immortalized, in Oklahoma, at least. The medal is on a ribbon and is incribed with my name and the name of the book. It looks like an Olympic Silver Medal. I’m tempted to wear it around my neck for a few months and see if I can drum up some business.
In the last post, I mentioned that I’m trying to set up some Colorado signings for myself during the last week of October. I’m still negotiating, but it does look like I’ll be doing Tattered Cover in Denver during the weekend of October 28. Keep an eye out – I’ll post the dates as they are finalized.
July 5th, 2007
Boy, I sure hope your Denver signing works out! I would love to say hello to you in person!