When I went to bed Wednesday night, there were scattered thundershowers in the area.  It was humid as all get-out, too, and temperatures have been well above normal for the last week or so.  Added up, it came as no surprise when I woke up Thursday morning to what appeared to be a moderately dense fog hanging over the neighborhood.

I live on a golf course, which means a lot of wide-open grassy areas.  Plants transpire a lot at night, so it adds moisture to the air.  When there's a layer of warm air trapped close to that moisture by a blanket of cold air above, you get fog.  Conditions were absolutely perfect for it.

What did shock me was the smell when I walked outside: the unmistakable smell of burning wood.  My first reaction, of course, was to turn immediately and look to see if my house was on fire.  No?  Good.  There had been a fire in the neighborhood last fall, and conditions are even more conducive to flame-ups right now than they were then, so it then dawned on me that we may have another unfortunate family elsewhere in the 'hood.  Fortunately, no — as I looked around, I saw no columns of smoke rising into the sky.  But it had me puzzled.  What was burning?

I got my answer a little after I arrived in the office.  It turns out, there's a wild fire burning out on the coast to the southeast of Raleigh.  Wednesday night, as I watched the radar to see if we were going to get some rain, I noticed it was all moving in from the southeast.  Two plus two?  Holy crap, it equals four.

So, Raleigh spent Thursday and, to a lesser extent, Friday blanketed in a layer of smoke that cut visibility down under two miles in some places.  And it really ticks me off, because my subconscious mind is confused: it smelled like mid-winter, but it's a week away from the beginning of summer.  And it made its way into the office, too.  Shorts and the smell of a wood fire.  I'm quite conflicted.

In other news, an impromptu street show broke out Thursday as I returned to the office from Subway (in the aforementioned smoke screen).  Apparently, the movie Diary of a Mad Black Woman has a live, off-Broadway version, and it came to the corner of Fayetteville and Davie streets at 11:45 a.m.  At first, we thought she was yelling at someone in particular.  A quick glance behind us proved that she was, in fact, yelling at a lot of people.  None of whom, by the way, were visible to anyone else.  It's things like the smoke and an apparently schizophrenic woman that can really throw you off-kilter for the remainder of a day.

Other Ramblings

• I don't know much about Camille Paglia, but what little I've seen up to this point shows that she leans almost as far to the left as Hugo Chavez — which is the likely reason for her apparent belief that Barrack Obama is a very centered candidate (in reality, some of his ideas are so far out in left field that, if he was playing for the Chicago Cubs, he'd be playing his home games in Comiskey Park while the rest of the team was at Wrigley Field).  However, she had what may go down in history as the best Clinton-related quote ever:

  "Hillary for veep? Are you mad? What party nominee worth his salt would chain himself to a traveling circus like the Bill and Hillary Show? If the sulky bearded lady wasn't biting the new president’s leg, the oafish carnival barker would be sending in the clowns to lure all the young ladies into back-of-the-tent sword-swallowing. It would be a seamy orgy of scheming and screwing."

  I am infinitely proud of the fact that I've finally been able to use the phrase "seamy orgy" on this site without it reflecting on me.  That's been a life-long goal of mine.

• California is finally responsible for something good besides Happy Cows.  Administrators at a Cali high school had police inform students that some of their classmates had been killed in accidents involving alcohol over the weekend.  It was all a ruse, though; the goal of the exercise was to scare the kids away from driving while intoxicated.  It worked — some kids wound up in hysterics.  After finding out the truth, many students protested the apparent cruelty of the act.  I, for one, applaud that school.  Kids today believe they are invincible, and have an utter disregard for others.  Maybe this sort of thing needs to be widespread.  I say it should be expanded: make the kids watch autopsies of victims of drunk driving.  Make them realize how fragile life really is before it's too late.  Kudos, El Camino High School of Oceanside, Cal.
• And, finally…tomorrow is Father's Day. Being a dad is the thing in my life I am most proud of; the fact that I am managing to do it on my own is just gravy on the 'taters.  There is no job in life more draining, but none so rewarding, either.  And I'm not going to candy-coat this: it's nice to have the world revolve around me for a day, too.