Rain & Coffee

Rain. Thunder and lightening. A long wait in traffic, finally brought to an end by driving over a low median and through town, all to get my tire changed. I'd had a flat on Friday, and since they didn't have the tire in stock that I needed, they gave me a "loaner" used tire, free of charge, until mine came in. I had told the guy I had to drive to Long Island this weekend, and he didn't mind, didn't hesitate: "Don't worry," he said, "it'll get you there." He'd known my brother, as it turned out. I had to tell him that he was dead, watch his face recompose itself. They'd been friends. I'm sorry, I say, sorry. Had his problems, he says. Yes. We used to go visit your father. I shake my head. Oh. He's happy, though, to meet my mother, and the unexpected reconnection makes the events leading up to it (riding on the rim for 1/4 mile down a shoulderless country road at 1 am; a repair shop guy so lousy that I told the tow to take the car elsewhere) seem, if not providential ---we're not providential types---, then unwasted. Is there such a word ? Not "well spent," and please don't write to me about synchronicity. Somewhere between "meaningless" and "meaningful," I suppose, is the concept I want, the random very annoying event achieving some kind of found value.

I had meant to carry on a bit about one thing I've noticed of late: other people's blogs are pretty. They have lovely graphics around the frames, pictures aplenty, different colored type. Some may also not be free, either, girl, I tell myself as I tire of typing in the html code for every italicized phrase, every everthing. I have three different browsers, and not one will give me the editing features offered here. I could, though, upload images, hence the espresso machine that graces this post and, in the real, my every morning. I have an earlier version of this machine (a Krups) pumping steadily since 1997. I mean two cappuccinos a day on an average day. What html I've learned, I've cribbed and copied, and the "preview" feature here helps oodles because I can witness my mistakes before committing to them. Some people talk of "moving" their blogs. Hadya do that ? I'm not tempted in any serious way yet, but a look at blogs created with typepad and even salon.com make me yearn to do something more creative with mine. Eye candy is so, so, so... tempting. So is this:

If I win the lottery, I'm ordering the Pavoni before I do anything else. I met someone once whose life was the sort of life where she had acquired one of these as a Christmas gift. She'd never used it. It was like being handed the keys to a Porsche that someone never drove. She wasn't silly enough, alas, not to want it as a kitchen ornament.

There is something magic about that first cappuccino for the chronically underslept. I should now be logged into an online training course I must complete, I should now be in bed since I have a meeting in the morning, but neither of those things is going to happen just yet. I don't even know how I came upon it, but I've been reading a blog called "Struggle in a Bungalow Kitchen" that got me started on the eye-candy issue. It's a salon.com blog, and I am suspicious of those blogs--- a good number of them seem to be (very comptetent) writers hawking their books and linked to other blogs of murky commercial intent. "Struggle" will probably get added to my blog list; I'm enjoying it and she's linked to some really excellent blogs. She links to one called Juno whose most recent post, the only post I read, says all I've wanted to say about Rove and his, I admit to hoping, comeuppance. Smug ugly little creature, isn't he ? Vanity Fair had quite a long article on Rove and his ways. The title of Juno's post is "Bead and Feather Him." Yes, do. I'm sure anyone passing by this blog has noticed my blog links to left, right and center. Well, probably to the articulate who live somewhere on one side or another of the radii emanting from common and meaningful human ground . No radical outliers, to change mathematical metaphors here. Well, enough of that. I need to go to bed, dream of Pavonis and make sure my suit is pressed. I loved today, a follow up to a late afternoon spent at the lake yesterday, bobbling in the water and drying out in the early evening sun: a real summer day. Even the rain and the traffic jam couldn't shake it from me today. After the tire was put on, I drove back through town and stopped at the ice cream parlor, brushed water off one of the benches outside and sat, vanilla fudge cone in hand, watching the cars find their way to the Main Street shortcut, the barber shop pole twirling across the street, the utility trucks making their way to a the downed pole, everything sunny and waterlogged all at once.