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Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Basilisk Stare

Finally.

Missed the whole thing last year - shut in one room or another all day every day, banging and tearing and pounding at work - missed it all but thirty minutes there and fifty minutes back, burned to a seat and a steering wheel, broiling in a cockpit, those one or two days in ten I had to be there at that place, bodily.

Missed a whole SoCal summer; lost now to history, never to be had back.

And the one before, much of it anyways, to Remodel Phase I; but that had purpose, and gain. That was worth it.

But today at least, one week into Phase II - Rest o' the Hoose; one day into Week Two en-vacances between jobs; today at least, at last, I lay myself out in the backyard blaze - laptop, book, icy drink and smokes - lay myself out on a spanking new lounger and toasted me all to bright vivid pink.

Later I swam, to cool off. Can't tell you how long since I last tapped toe to the blue: probably not since my neck blew-out three years ago?

Missed my belovèd, who was at work. Recalled our first two summers together, when both of us worked the same place five minutes away, how we'd run home at lunch and just float in the sun.

A residue of Scot snarled bitterly that I'd slapped-on some Factor 8 before I lay out. Sunscreen is not our way; much as we defy the laws of english in our speech, so do we despise anything tagged "Good for you" in health. But here I am tonight, aglow but not afire, ready to lie out tomorrow and burn the other side.

My laptop, of course, was useless: the glare made it unreadable. I'd sat it in a box for shade, but the reflector was me. I'm reading my way through a series of specs, all of them long, that I'll need to know backwards and forwards in the coming months; but that's now for nighttime. Sat out back, in the glory of light, it has to be Stross, and Scalzi. I know - dreadful, isn't it?