Indian Summer

After some very welcome cooler weather last week, it's hot again, and likely to stay that way for a while. I have a theory (and after my squirrel evolution post a couple of weeks ago, you just knew I'd eventually venture back into the scientific realm again, didn't you?) that weather patterns have shifted some two to four weeks over the past forty years, or in other words, since I was a kid. Back then, May was a warm, rainy month, but by the first week in June summer had set in and it was hot and dry until late August. Now the real summer heat usually doesn't kick in until July. Likewise, when I started to school (un-air-conditioned, of course) in September, the first few days were pretty hot, but after a week or so it cooled off nicely, only to warm up again around the first of October. We seldom had snow or ice after the middle of February; now it's the middle of March before you can count on winter being over. I'm not convinced about global warming, but I do believe the weather does some odd things on its own, and this is one of them.

I've still got the bad knee, but it didn't stop me from running errands today. At one stop, in a discount clothing store, of all places, I found a rack of cheap DVDs, including the original Dick Tracy serial starring Ralph Byrd. Well, I couldn't leave it there, of course. There was also a set of five Tarzan movies, but not any of the really good ones, so I resisted that temptation.

I've also been writing and had a nice productive weekend. I wanted to have the current book finished by the end of the month and it looks like it's going to go over about a week into November, but that's not disastrous.