Oh-dark-hundred is when you get up in the total dark to start the morning. Who can focus well enough to read the clock at that hour anyway? So oh-dark-hundred it is.

That was the time I arose from my pallet, threw on my tunic, and went out to wrestle a bear. No, wait, that was a dream....

Early morning it was when I drove my friend over to Union Station to catch a 6 o'clock train to San Diego. Greater love hath no friend--and all that. Not a great sacrifice on my part, since I love to drive, especially at that hour of the day, and I succumbed to a bribe of Starbuck's best.

The night sky was brilliant with stars, as it is at this time of year, when there's no moisture and as yet no dust in the atmosphere. Give it a few weeks and the dust will rise, hanging there at first and then blown into our faces by the Santa Ana winds.

By 9 a.m. I had gone grocery shopping (and put the groceries away), watered the garden, washed and dried laundry, eaten breakfast and washed the dish, and then spent some time trying to figure out why the a/c downstairs keeps shutting itself off after half an hour (obviously on a timer).

That entailed a search, high and low, for the instructions, which were hiding inside the unabridged dictionary (how they got there, I'll never know). If I hadn't seen a piece of paper sticking out of this ginormous tome, I never would have found them until mid-winter, probably.

I ate my breakfast on the front porch (stoop, really), and watched the school buses roll by doing dry runs. School starts next week, the hottest time of the year. Only the buses for special needs students are air conditioned; the regular children can sweat--and they're not allowed to bring water on the bus (a rule observed most often in the breach).

Now that I have the air conditioning running, I'll start sorting and folding laundry, packing stuff in boxes (going to paint both rooms after the windows are installed), and maybe read a chapter or two.

Or...I feel a nap coming on...ZZZZZzzzzz....