It's been so gray and cool for so many days the tourist businesses at the beaches are complaining about a lack of tourists! The front page story on Wednesday's Eagle Tribune was about how cold it is. The weird thing is, it's not cold! The air is so thick with moisture you could cut it with a knife. The sky is so gray I think I died and woke up in Nova Scotia (no insult intended to the province of my ancestors just an observation). And why are the tacky businesses at Salisbury and Hampton and whatever beaches complaining? The tourists spend more money on tacky stuff when they're in the shops and stupid arcades instead of baking their bodies in the sun. The Eagle Tribune's nose for news needs a decongestant.
It poured this morning so Rita and I cancelled our walk. We got together for lunch and espresso instead. Now I'm back home procrastinating on calling the travel agent, procrastinating in make this weird broken glass assemblage, procrastinating on writing the great American novel (actually I do that every day), and wondering how that mockingbird knows when I'm in my study.
Last night as I was leaving for dinner at Tom & Julie's, a group of boys was dancing the Macarena around the swimming pool. A little fella in black baggies, a tight black t-shirt, and a Cleveland Indians cap cut quite a figure in the parking lot out side the pool gate. There must've been 10 or 12 kids spinning around with the music cranked up. I expect the mockingbird to start singing the Macarena any day now.
So I called the travel agent, who seemed surprised no one had called me back. She connected me to the voice mail of the agent who is handling my itinerary. I left a message saying I wanted to change my itinerary and skip Japan. Now I have the feeling this will make it even harder. I am starting to disagree with Jeff Greenwald's thesis that you don't get a sense of the size of the world when you fly. At the moment, Vladivostok might as well be on the moon.
I went back downstairs and resumed stacking broken glass. This thing is just not coming out the way I want. I want strata of each color going up from brown to clear. The brown glass is in such big chunks I almost think I should break it more, but that sort of goes against the spirit of this project. I've gotta arrange it the way it came.