Take to the sky

We’re in mid-August. Much of the Lower 48 is sweltering under record temperatures; the West is burning—literally—and in the environs of the District They Call Columbia, we’ve got a heat index in the triple digits. But it doesn’t stop here; Greece and Siberia are on fire and Sicily this week recorded 120F. Seems like the entire Northern Hemisphere is presaging Hell.

So today’s earworm is Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong covering “Summertime”. There’s a lot of Porgy & Bess that I find problematic, but this song really captures the season. We may have moved past "the livin' is easy" part, but I'm definitely here for rising up singing.

 

Mystery car

I’ve got an identification issue. Not flora, as per usual; vehicular.

My eye was caught by this front end on one of my walks:

It’s the no-name grille that I find so unusual. Also, actually, menacing. Something about those unbroken lines that makes me think “killer kar”.

So I walked around to the rear end to see what make it was. It says Honda, but I’ll be blowed if I can find anything that looks quite like that in their inventory. 

I searched on “big-assed Honda SUV”, but didn’t find the combination of the overhang thing, taillights and bumper. Their biggest SUV is the Pilot, but nothing on the web resembles this. I realize that the front end has been customized, but I guess the back end has, too?

STOP PRESS: I examined it on this morning's walk, and it in fact does say PILOT to the left of the rear plate. But it still looks weird.

So I’m stumped. But I wouldn’t like to meet it coming round the curve in a lonely road at dusk.

 

 

 

Daily motivation

As you may know, I get up at zero dark-thirty to get my daily walks in. Even so, it was 73F yesterday when I started with a pretty high dew point. It wasn’t as ghastly as when I went out around 1115 to buy new trainers, but I still came back with everything I was wearing soaked.

However, here’s what keeps me heading out most every day—the beauty you can see at that hour. Viz: the breaking sun's reflection on the clouds:

Also, this pair:

They didn’t seem too fussed by me, although passing cars disturbed the one. (Well, I get that—speed limit is 30, but my guess is that every vehicle on the road blows past that by 15 mph.)

But I wouldn’t have seen them five hours later.

 

Acting squirrely

One day last week I was at my desk, talking with a colleague, when I noticed activity in the Japanese maple tree in the front yard.

There must be something at the end of the branch that’s especially tasty, because I’ve seen them doing this at other times. I keep hoping they’ll fall off, but nope. They always manage to twist themselves around and scamper up the branch.

 

 

Gratitude Monday: PTO

My gratitude today is small, but luxurious: I have the whole week off.

I have no plans whatsoever, except to get my car’s annual inspection, see the dentist and have my regular yoga lesson. But I will not be checking in on work, and no one expects me to.

Yay.

 

 

The lure of the open spaces

Because Summer, I’ve had to take my daily walks earlier than in other seasons. Viz: I’m on the pavement by 0500 and even then I’m soaked when I get home an hour later. One morning I woke up at 0345 and just got up because I knew I had no hope of more sleep before I had to start walking.

When I start out, there are only crickets to accompany me, with the occasional sleepy bird. About halfway through, the rest of the chorus has started up. I don’t use manmade sound, largely because I don’t need it, but also because I like to hear my surroundings when it’s still black all around me. The People’s Republic being what it is, there are actually no streetlights between my cluster and Wiehle Avenue (about a mile or so), so when I say “black”, I mean it. The darkness starts thinning around 0530, and it’s almost light when I get back home.

So I rely on Artemis to light my path. She’s been waning over the past two weeks, as you can see—here she is on the 25^th; not quite full:

The next morning, she was playing with her companion, Mars:

By the 27^th, she was outracing him:

And the day after she left him in the stardust:

Here she was yesterday, a completely different position in the sky:

Here she was this morning, just a shadow of her former self, although you can see her full outline (Mars was actually behind me when I took this shot):

 

(I may need to carry a flashlight for a few days, until she returns from her monthly rest.)

In honor of my silver companion, today’s earworm is Mary Chapin Carpenter singing “The Moon and Saint Christopher”. Right now, the lure of the open spaces has to be satisfied with a walk, but the open door still tempts me. 

 

Recruiter fail

Okay, this is a first; offshore recruiter reached out to me for a position I would not touch with a barge pole…using my work email.

I mean—the offshore and completely irrelevant job are not new; it’s the work email part that’s cherce.

Here’s what I have to say about this: if you claim to be MD of an executive search firm, and you check out my profile on LinkedIn but you can’t contact me through that platform, then you’re either spectacularly incompetent or your company is too cheap to buy a recruiter’s subscription that would allow you to do that.

Either way, blocked.

 

 

All aboard

An industry publication, The Cyber Post, reported Monday on a cyber attack on the Iranian rail system that occurred in July. According to researchers, on 9 July a wiper attack disrupted train service and directed customers via all the displays and message boards at train stations to call 64411, the number for the office of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, for information.

Look, cyber attacks are bad; I am not arguing otherwise. Ransomware operators in particular are zeroing in on hospitals and healthcare systems because they’re more likely to pay than negotiate to get their life-critical systems back up and running. These people are despicable.

But bringing the nation’s railway system to a halt and then redirecting customer service calls to the head of state?

Chef’s kiss.