Down and out

The city has survived another heat wave, worse than the last -- the temperature reportedly hit 97. This is unheard of, but it certainly explains why it was impossible Sunday evening to get cool, and the way the house just seemed to get warmer and warmer instead of cooler. To top it off, Sunday is garbage night, and we put our cans on the front sidewalk, next to the gated-off breezeway. Our bedroom window faces the breezeway, and of course we had to keep the window open because of the heat. So that meant listening to bums going through the recycling for hours on end, looking for cans and bottles. Of course each one has to look, because, ya know, he might be the first to get there.

But I shouldn't complain. I could be one of those bums. Although I'm not sure I'd ever fall so low as to go through people's recycling for cans.

You know what -- those people work hard. They push their loaded-up stolen shopping carts for miles across the city, looking for cans and bottles that are worth pennies to them. At the end of six or eight hours' work, maybe they've got twenty or thirty bucks worth. What they do with the twenty bucks is, of course, their business. But it's a shame that energy can't be put to good use -- like actually cleaning all the garbage from the streets, not just the recyclable garbage.

Last night the fog returned, in a tentative way; today was sunny again, but vastly cooler. Tonight the fog is coming in for real. I find myself hoping that's the last of the summer's heat, but this year has been so screwy that I'm afraid it's not.