I'm driving to class, thinking about my story. We're supposed to turn in a second draft tonight, but I'm not close to finished. My revision took a sudden course change last night, and I threw out everything but the central idea. The project became less a revision than a wholesale rewrite. That's more than I can complete in 24 hours, though I made a valiant effort.

I'm driving, thinking of Julia, my new secondary character. I reach the intersection of Central Point and New Era Roads. I look left to check for traffic, and once again Mother Nature sucks the breath right out of me.

What I see is not a sunset — the sun will not set for another hour — but a sort of sunbreak in the gloaming.

It's raining. The grey clouds hang heavy over the green hills, sagging with wetness. To the west, there is a break in the clouds — a gap, really — through which the sun glows yellow and white, an ill-defined fuzzy ball of dull light. The sky and the clouds around the sun burn deep orange surrounded by smoky cream, here and there a touch of ember red. Further from the sun, the brightness blends with the storm clouds, becoming a striking grey-purple, then deep grey, then black. The entire canvas of color is muted and smeared, like a watercolor left in the rain.

Words cannot do it justice.

I know this instinctively, and pull my car to the side of the road. I leap out into the rain, and grab my camera from the trunk. Then reality hits. By the time I find and mount my graduated neutral density filter (which I need because of the brightness of the sun), the moment will have passed. And then I check the film I have loaded: high-speed (3200 ISO) black-and-white. Not what this vista requires.

I put the camera bag in its bag and get back into the car. I'm soaked through from the rain. I roll down my window and for a few moments I stare to the west, inhaling the spectacular show before me, cursing my unpreparedness.

Mac stopped by Tuesday afternoon to see if I wanted to make photographs with him. I declined because I had writing homework to finish, but I'm glad he made effort. I need to shoot more.

Mac's been on a tear lately, turning out some of his best work. I particularly like this photo, and not because it's a skin-shot. Something about the colors and lines and textures pleases me.

Amazing, but true: you can now search Amazon based on every word inside more than 120,000 books.

So, after many false starts over the past year, I'm finally losing weight. The funny thing is, I didn't intend to start a diet this time around. It just happened. I've been sick for much of the past several weeks, and haven't had much of an appetite. Now that I'm feeling better, I'm not eating as much because I spent several weeks eating little or nothing, and now I don't feel the need to overindulge. Outstanding! I weighed in at 193 pounds this morning, which is the lowest I've been in some months. I've taken my belt in a notch (and a half, actually). I'm wearing my L shirts instead of my XL shirts. My self-image is improving. I need to keep this up! If I'd start exercising, maybe actual fitness could be on the horizon…

Custom Box Service is on pace for a record month. It's been busy around here, which is a relief. After a solid spring, we had three months of slow sales, and we were beginning to worry a little. This month has been fantastic, though, and our worries have been assuaged.

To the spammers of the world: what makes you think that I'd even want to enlarge my penis? Are there so many guys that want this that they're able to prop up the entire spamming industry?

On this day at foldedspace.org

2004 — Vote!   I took some time this morning to complete my mail-in ballot. Here's how I voted.

2001 — Finding Humor in a Humorless World   Things I don't find amusing: all of the little anti-Taliban and anti-Osama gags that have been making the e-mail circuit. These trivialize a very serious issue.