Dancing Around the Four Sides

And I'm not sorry to see you go. You were entirely unseasonably warm all the way through, except for those few days we had unseasonable rain.

Dreamed last night I was reading a newspaper (a real paper, with newsprint) and stopped to look at a quarter-page advertisement for ... Canadian blueberry trees. Trees, the size of mighty elms. With blueberries. They had four varieties -- the names vanished from my consciousness as soon as I awakened (as happens with dreams), but I think one of them may have been MacLeod. I don't know. I do know that last week I had a dream that involved a talking wolf. Brain is braining some strange stuff in the night.

Finished Ron Chernow's Grant and what can I say, it was amazing. Two enthusiastic thumbs up, but wow does it require an investment of a big chunk of time. Was it the perfect biography? No; I wished Chernow had spent a bit more time on the role of Grant's son Frederick in the extremely ugly West Point hazing of the first black cadet, and I wished there had been at least a short follow-up on the lives of Grant's wife and children (one of his granddaughters married a Russian prince!).

Anyway. Started reading Lesley Nneka Arimah's What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky: Stories last night. I was very surprised by the ending to the first story, "The Future Looks Good." I have liked all the stories so far, though.

Just as I had suspected, the 10-day forecast was hooey. It is 98 degrees outside (36.7 degrees Celsius), and with the humidity at 39% and the dewpoint at 69%, it feels as though it is 107 (41.7). Summer, go away.

Way more than halfway through Grant. Grant has won the presidency (easily) and is busy appointing blacks and Jews to positions of public service in record numbers. NO WOMEN, THOUGH, HAHA. Not the wimmins' time yet. They're around and making noise (the Seneca Falls Convention was in 1848), but it's not yet time. The 19th Amendment won't come round until ... 1920.

1) It is actually the last Sunday of July, so that's the way I'll look at it. Instead of just another day in an endless summer.

2) This is a terrifically cute little vid! Dog on the run with a GoPro. :D

3) In a gardening note, we seem to have a baby Tabasco plant volunteer growing in an old pot. Okay then.

Three things; post.