Back when I was living in San Antonio, every year we'd have Cedar Fever. that was the time when all of the "mountain cedars" which are actually ash junipers I think, would drop their pollen. Actually it came out more like a cloud -- a big, yellow cloud.
Every year, and they may still do this, a reporter would go up into the hill country -- no more than 5 miles or so outside of town -- and stand in a field with the trees. The reporter, usually one of the weather men, would grab a branch and shake. Try to imagine a tree covered in yellow powder. That's what it looked like. The stuff just flys off like powder.
A LOT of people are allergic to that stuff. Actually even people that weren't really allergic to it had problems just because there was so MUCH of it in the air. Sort of like the mold spores. Most of the time they don't bother you but somewhere along the way they'll reach a high enough concentration that'll get your nose running.
Anyway, fortunately here in Memphis we don't have ash juniper trees. Lots of OTHER trees but not those. We've not nice pine trees and pear trees and some oaks and maples. Dogwood, magnolia. And those pain in the ass flowering trees that are the bane of my existance this time of year!
Ahem. Sorry. Sometimes it's hard to control myself :-)
Most of the time, these trees are very nice. Small, green leaves. Not too tall. Nice branches. They don't make much of a mess in the fall. In the spring and early summer they have nice, pretty flowers on them. Some are white, some pink, some purple, and some inbetween pink and purple. However, mid-summer, right about NOW for example, they pollenate. I can actually see it when I walk the dogs. You look inside the flower and there's lots of little yellow clusters in there just WAITING to fall out. If a wind kicks up, they float on out and drop all over everything. If you have a dark enough colored car, you can actually see it piling up on your hood.
We've been a bit lucky the past few days in that it's rained just about every day. These are mostly daytime heating showers but we've also had a few thunderstorms. One actually knocked out power for a little while. Point is, the rain knocks the pollen out of the air so it's not a problem . . . much. But it won't last forever.
As you may have guessed, this is the Memphis version of cedar fever. It's worse though in many ways. What really makes it a pain is that it comes right in the middle of summer. Now, honestly, it's bad enough getting sick in the winter and fall but who wants to be sick in the middle of summer? Bad enough you're all sweaty from the hot, humid air, but then you have to add in a stuffy, runny nose and all that mess.
Makes me grouchy.
Makes me tired.
Makes my head hurt.
On the plus side, it doesn't last nearly as long as cedar fever season in Texas. I suppose that's SOME consolation, just not much.
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Almost time for football season! Not that fake, wimpy metric football either! That's right, time for REAL football. It's still early, I know. But pre-season starts in about 3 weeks. Well, 2 and a half now. That's sure to brighten my mood up a bit :-)
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Got the new Harry Potter, as you can see from the sub-heading. Really funny story about that one. Ok not REALLY funny but somewhat funny. I'm cheap. I don't like having to pay extra for the super fast shipping because they always charge more than they should. So when I order things online, I usually do so with the assumption that it's going to take at LEAST a week to get to me. Well, that wasn't quite the case with this book.
I was over at Amazon.com Saturday night. I'd been browsing the net checking to see if I was right in my predictions about what happens in this book (and I was). Given what I'd read in the reviews, I decided to go ahead and order a copy now instead of waiting. Saturday night, maybe 10 pm or later, I put in my order.
Tuesday afternoon there's a knock at the door. I get up, check through the peep hole, no one's there. I open the door and there's a package on my doorstep . . . from Amazon.com. I was thinking, surely this can't be the books I ordered Saturday night. I didn't ask for any quick shipping. Hell I just took the freebie shipping which is as slow as you can get. But there it was, my Harry Potter book. I guess they had things wound pretty tight over at Amazon and if you ordered one of these you got processed faster than usual. But even still, I ordered it Saturday night. That means it got processed and the box packed Sunday morning. Had to because the post office here tends to be slow. That box had to arrive Monday in time for sorting and delivery on Tuesday. I wish ALL my Amazon shipments came in that fast :-)
As for a review of the book, I just started it last night so I've only read the first few chapters. It's more like the last three than the first two. I've noticed that the further she moves the plot, the more complicated it all gets. The first two books were fairly straight-forward. The plots weren't all that complex nor the characters too deep. But starting with the third book, and continuing on through the rest, it's been growing more and more complex.
Don't listen to this rubbish that the books are getting "darker" and all that. Books aren't dark. Movies are dark. Pictures are dark. Rooms are dark. What reviewers mean is that the book has a lot more gloom in it. More scenes where things are stating to look bad for the characters and that's really how it SHOULD be at this point in the story arc. We're really reaching the end of the second act in the play so things SHOULD look bad. We've got to be in a position, at the end of this book, where we have doubts about how the story will be revolved. We need to feel a little bit of peril here so that when we finally reach the third act, the next book, our protagonists will be more heroic and our antagonists will fall all the further.
I don't know how she intends to wind up this series. Up until now I've been able to predict most of the major plot "twists" before they happened. In story like this, certain things ALWAYS need to happen before the action is resolved. But when you get to the third act, all bets are off. She can resolve it any way she wants to. Happy ending? Maybe. Tragic ending? Doubtful. Most likely it'll land somewhere in between. Does that mean Harry will make it through? Who knows? But I can certainly see the possibility of Harry dieing a heroic death and as a coda, having Ron and Hermione married, years in the future, naming their first-born after him. But then again, I can picture it ending in a LOT of different ways. Guess we'll all just have to wait and see how she does it.
So there you go, long blog entry for today. Hope that makes up a bit for the lack of posting. Enjoy your summer reading!
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