Afternoon Storms.

Live from the edge of a thunderstorm out here at Sundress State University at Greater Whitsett, and from a final I thought would take about an hour and a half, but which has three-quarters of the class still frantic 165 minutes in. Whoops. That's why they shouldn't let the writing hacks teach the literature courses.

It's been an odd, timeless day, the capper on an odd, timeless week, and here I sit in the hospitalized fluorescents and the technology-in-the-classroom hum of whatever they've got shacked away there behind the half-sized closet door next to the spaceship console that has something to do with playing DVDs or doing the PowerPoint, and just out the window there is this little storm, the clouds white-yellow instead of gray, the top of a dogwood getting rattled by pea-fat raindrops. If I was in these kids' chairs instead of mine, I'd turn in whatever I had and go out and stand in it.

It's not just us, by the by: it's everywhere. Here's as pretty a radar as you'll ever see:


There may be a homeworkless weekend on my horizon. There is surely the prospect of hanging the Do Not Disturb up on the work email here shortly. There is the idea of cracking the door on that shed out back once more. The prayer of another book, or at least a new paragraph. Let's not get ahead of ourselves, though:

Weekend forecast—more rain, then cooler.

Lone certain weekend plan—consider beginning to perhaps look for what might become the floor in the new shed.

Best not to aim for too much more than that. Not right here at first.