Today's blog is about hotness

113 when I finally found my car in the parking lot.

105 as I raced through the cotton fields towards I10.

109 when I parked at the hotel.

Do I need to write anything more?

I think this picture conveys the hotness we're talking about here. An unforgiving sky, a searing hot wall, nothing more.




I started the day once again at the Paradise Bakery where I had a nice little quiche and fresh fruit combo. I sat around the corner from the business end of the place, it was just too noisy with all the posturing businessmen yesterday. Who they were posturing for I am not sure, but they were into a full rut for some reason or another.

I took a tall table near the main room, figuring it would be quiet. And it was for a while. The woman in the Volvo station wagon who had played chicken with me in the parking lot roundabout sat off to one side, and an older man sat on my other.

Little Jordon from Saint Charles, LA (they have their hometowns on their name badges) brought a plate of toast to the elderly fellow explaining that she had prepared it just as he wanted it - well done but not incinerated. He said, "Oh."

I ate in peace for a few minutes before Elderly Man started applying butter to his toast. The noise was not unlike someone sanding a deck with one of those big rotary floor refinishing machines. He finally stopped and sat there reading until he was joined by a friend who felt for some reason the need to speak very loudly about children getting intestinal distress from the chemicals they put in pools. I was not sure of the appropriateness of this line of conversation since it was graphic, and we were all sitting around eating, afterall. But he went on despite my glares in his general direction.

Apparently blackened toast was not what Elderly Man wanted, because Companion Man stated to be loudly amazed at the condition of the bread. He held a piece up to an innocent woman who had been eating quietly and asked her if she wanted some. She answered with a polite "no thank you" which was not the reponse Companion Man wanted, so he got up with a huff and went off to yell at the Toast Staff.

Tiring of this pagent I folded up my USA Today and went to work where throughout the entire day, nothing as interesting as the Toast Outrage came to pass.

Beyond that, it was just a matter of nearly dying walking aimlessly around the parking lot looking for my rental car in the aforementioned heat. I found it finally after trying to open a similar car of the same color with a key that did not work. Yes, you are detecting a pattern here. And that pattern extends now to my hotel room whose number I could not remember last night, recalling only that it was on the 1st floor and that it had a "5" in it.

I'm going to have to start renting different color cars (this one is Ruby Red also) and staying in different hotels or one of these nights I am going to end up unintentionally stealing a car and staying in someone else's room.