They keep threatening us with rain.
I’d say “promising,” except it rarely comes to pass. Today it looks like most of the showers are going east of us. That’s okay for them—they need it as badly as we do. There are some bad fires up in East Texas. Three million acres have burned or are burning across the state. That’s a little less than the total area of Connecticut.
40% chance today, 60% tomorrow, which looks promising, then back down to 40% on Thursday. Maybe summer will make up for this torrid, dry spring we’ve had.
I finished the first draft of the new short story this morning. It came in at 3800 words, which is 800 words over the limit. Should have no trouble paring it down, though. This was one of those first drafts where I was telling myself the story first and foremost. At least 400 of those words should go through the usual tightening and editing process and then it will be time to look at the story overall to see what is in there that doesn’t belong. I don’t anticipate any trouble getting back to 3000 words (he says confidently).
We had a strange experience watching Six Feet Under last night. Partway through an episode, my wife said, “I wonder who that actress is.” That in and of itself was unusual, as she doesn’t often care about that sort of thing. I’m the guy who’s always saying things like, “Hey, there’s the guy who was the doctor in Deadwood.” The actress didn’t look even vaguely familiar to me, so I looked her up. Turns out she was the daughter of one of my wife’s colleagues, an actress who appeared in a lot of supporting TV roles about a decade ago. Alas, she died about a year or so after that episode aired. My wife had seen pictures of the young woman in her colleague’s office, which is why she looked familiar. Weirdness.
