New Belt.

I bought a new belt today. First belt I can remember buying. My other belts were from high school. Turns out: belts matter. They keep these newfangled Gap jeans on my body. Bought me some Gap jeans off the interwebs. AMR had some kind of sale card thing. This was a while back. My other Gap jeans, which I bought a whole other while back, when we stopped at an outlet mall on the way back from the beach two years ago looking for overalls for my mom, didn't much stay on, either. Probably gonna try out my new belt on those things, too. Hey, new belt. All y'all out there should get yourselves belts. Yeah, belts.

It rained most of the time I was shopping for my new belt and most of the time that followed that time, but not much overall: a tenth of an inch here. More than that out in 27244, where it rained more earnestly. Gray and cool. Like maybe long-sleeves cool. We'll be hot again, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't think about chili walking through the breezeway between Whitley and Alamance today. Whitley and Alamance sound like a turn-of-the-last-century comedy team. British. Ladies and germs, please give a rousing welcome to Whitley & Alamance.

Me, I've got time and energy to spare, enough to make jokes about belts and buildings. Good luck to those of you in Texas who have no such luxury, who need plywood and, well, luck. Ike looks bad at this point. They've been half-wrong all year, so maybe they'll be half-wrong again, and maybe that thing will settle down, but it's over warm water, and that can't be great.

Gray and cool and drizzly here tomorrow. Heat building back in this weekend, but cooler, crisper days may be in the offing after that. It's surely time for that kind of thing. We'll see.

My new belt's so new that when I move the leather creaks.