Background Noise.

Long sleeves, jeans, and bare feet in the sun: hey, early October, hey, front porch, hey, dog taking measure from the front step, hey birds, hey crickets, hey three new flats of pansies installed in the wake of yesterday's fiasco of a department meeting out at the puppet show. Every time I get good and disappointed, we get some real landscaping done around here. But are we coming to you live from a crystalline October Saturday morning to discuss crushing defeat at the hands of petty fools? We are not. Rather, then, this:

The hum called last night. On the phone. We returned from being not here to find a blinking message there in the kitchen, and lo and behold, it was the hum calling, saying they thought they'd fixed the problem, but wanted to make sure, and could I please call them back? And I did, and Juan of Giant Private Highrise Dorm Enterprises, Inc., told me that in fact there had been something wrong, and that in fact they had repaired the something, and that in fact he and they and the hum in general were all hoping that life around these parts had become less, shall we say, hummy, and I said that it so happily had, since give or take Tuesday or Wednesday, and he said that sounded about right, and I was then flooded with a wash of gratitude so large and all-encompassing that momentarily after we did hang up I considered sending flowers.

To recap: the stopped hum is officially not expected to restart. The regular wash of city noise rolls along apace, but without the attendant background hum. If, say, one loved the outside more than one loved the inside, then one could report that the outside was once again safe for democracy, or at least for self-centered amateur weather reportage of the coyote-dogged and bare-footed variety.

I'm still sending Juan something. Just don't know what.