Random Thoughts - The Too Hot to Concentrate Edition

We wait all year for Monsoon. The clouds are big and puffy, the sky is bluer than blue, then the clouds are massive and black and the wind blows and the rain pours down from darkened skies.  It makes for beautiful sunsets; TBG and I have taken to watching the sunset from the patio. It's been too hot to do it until last week; now the milder temperatures are balanced by the increased humidity.

No one from any other part of the country would think that it is sticky here right now.  Tucsonans, a different breed entirely, are melting.  We are weather wimps, and proud of it.
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Do you have a regular group of people who run/walk/take out the dogs in your neighborhood?  Sitting at a front window, typing to you every day, I have become accustomed to the grey-haired-guy-with-the-two-pugs; to the runner-with-the-leash-around-his-waist, attached to two Springer spaniels; the teen who wears black socks and long shorts; the octogenarian with her wooden walking sticks.

Recently, a fit, forty-something woman has taken to running in the early evenings.  She must not go down the hill; she's back much too quickly to have made it to the bottom and up again. I'm judging her form and her pace and her dedication as I wonder what I do that others, unbeknownst to me, are judging. It's something to think about.
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G'ma's been billed by Vonage since 2008, even though I cancelled the account and the phone number when she moved here that year.  It was a monthly, recurring $35 charge, the only charge on her Discover card in four years. None of her children did any investigation, until all three of us were on it like white on rice.  I called Vonage and lived through voice mail hell for a while before I got to the Account Manager.  She spoke coherent English and understood the problem.  She didn't deny that I had called to cancel, didn't tell me that I needed a code to verify the interaction, didn't mock me.  She listened, took some more information, and then, sighing, she said the truest thing I've heard in a while:

$35 a month since 2008..... that's a lot of money.

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I got G'ma into and out of The Schnozz  today.  I didn't sleep well last night, worrying about the viability of my plan. She had a follow-up appointment with the surgeon, and an ambulette seemed like more than we needed.  True to form, though it hurt and she was scared, my 90 year old maternal unit rose up from the wheelchair, pivoted on her own, and lowered herself into the front seat.

Such are the minor victories which make me smile.
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Ernie was here this morning, with the crew I met when I first became a customer.  We hugged.  We were sweaty but we held on for just a moment too long.  They hadn't seen me since I intersected with weaponry. I forgot how much people need to touch me to reassure themselves that I am really alive.
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This Snowden character is holding press conferences in the Moscow airport.  He's certainly entitled to have an opinion, but I'm not sure why NPR devoted minutes to his thoughts on the morality of the FISA court.

Emmanuel Kant, Thomas Hobbes, and Aristotle can speak on the subject and I'll pay attention. The ramblings of a 29 year old thief?  Not so much.
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I've not made much of the Snowden affair here in The Burrow, because there is nothing surprising to me about any of it. Collecting information in the aggregate is part and parcel of living in the digital age. We all have the illusion of privacy, and that's just fine.

As Daddooooo and G'ma told us, over and over again, "Don't do anything you wouldn't want printed on the front page of the New York Times."  I don't think that anyone in power cares how much time I spend on Jungle Jewels (much too much) but I really don't care if they know.
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That new woman is still running up and down our street.  I will no longer judge her.  She has shown endurance and tenacity; I shall dub her a regular as of this moment.