Elizabeth, I love it! You have sighted the elusive Minion, do I have that correct? "Rarely seen in the forests of the Great Lakes region". That settles it - we're gonna have to go creature hunting together. Between the two of us, who knows what we'll find next. :):)
I hope you had a nice Labor Day weekend. Betcha made some good dinners! I've been eating light during our heat wave, making big salads with Tons of Veggies and either tuna or salmon, plus avocado and a little pepper jack cheese, with the ubiquitous chips and salsa on the side. When it gets cold, maybe we can make some soup? What is your favorite? One of mine is French Onion, and also Split Pea. But I love soup of almost any kind, so let's put that on the menu for the Winter.
Right now, however, it's anything but Winter.
Yesterday was the hottest recorded day in the history of Los Angeles. The temperature reached 121 degrees in Woodland Hills, a town here in the Valley that's about eight miles from Northridge. Here in The 'Ridge it was 118, but the heat had a whole different quality to it this time. I ventured outside in the late afternoon, just to see what it felt like, and there was a weight to it, like an electrical charge. It was menacing, like that Twilight Zone episode where it just keeps getting hotter and hotter. I mean.......it was hot. Freakishly hot.
It was hammer down hot.
It was too hot even for me, so except for my brief outdoor test, I stayed inside and read my books. I finished "Norco '80", which was absolutely riveting and may be the best True Crime book I've ever read. Having finished "Norco", I began another book I've recently gotten from the Libe, via their curbside service : "Survivor Song" by Paul Tremblay, the horror novelist who broke into the big time after being recommended by Stephen King. That's how I heard of him, in 2018, and after reading his last book, "The Cabin At The End Of The World", I went and got everything he'd ever written. That's how good he is. So King was right, and when "Survivor Song" was published I put myself in the Library queue right away. The weird thing is, Tremblay's book is about a pandemic, but it was written just before the coronavirus hit. He began it two years ago (and it's about rabies, not covid), but it's weird because even in the first chapter he's talking about quarantines and PPE.
I did end up going for a CSUN walk last night at 8pm. I've gotta get my exercise at some point, but it was still about 100 degrees at that time. Tonight is at least 20 degrees cooler, so at least we're out of the apocalyptic heat range for now.
My album for this evening was "Moon Shaped Pool" by Radiohead. They are another band that I'm gonna have to immerse myself in at some point, like I've recently done with Gentle Giant. In the case of Radiohead, I've listened to their albums from time to time, and I think I own just about everything they've ever put out, save for b-sides and Thom Yorke solo albums. At the turn of the Millennium, I played the heck out of them : "Kid A", holy smokes what an album, and "OK Computer", an all time classic. But I need to do a major study of them, because they are pretty incredible, if bleak.
Last night I listened to a very beautiful album called "The Geese and The Ghost" by Anthony Phillips, who was the original guitarist in Genesis before leaving them in 1970, before they hit it big. His musical influence on them, however, was huge. He writes in the style of what I imagine is English folk music from centuries ago, soft acoustic music played on 12 string guitar, and it sounds like something you would hear in an English forest in the 1500s. It's a quiet album, but very melodic, and it evokes a feeling of peace.
That's all I really know for tonight. I'm thinking about you, as always. I'll see you tomorrow morning, out in the field on the edge of the woods. I'll be near The Tree of Electronic Devices. See you there.
I love you, Elizabeth! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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