The best thing about having a pool in your backyard with 8 ft. walls all around is the wonderful freedom of going swimming at night (or at any other time, for that matter) without having to wear a bathing suit. Like tonight, for instance – the outside temperature even at 10 PM is still 100 degrees, the sky above is cloud-filled, the water temperature is 94 degrees, and everything is bathed in shadows of gray and brown. There’s a slight breeze from the southeast rustling the palms; tonight they’re the only sound. Well, except for our wind chimes a-tinklein’. Kinda strange that everyone’s A/C units aren’t humming away, but I figure that’s because the clouds came in late this afternoon to temper the blistering July heat. Nevertheless, strange to walk out on the patio at this hour and still feel the heat of the surface on your feet.

A side note: this past wekend the Goodboys played in some of the most oppressive conditions I’ve ever played golf in, but as humid as it was, to me it still didn’t compare to the sheer blazing heat you get in Arizona this time of year. People can talk about “dry heat” all they want, but until you walk out in 107-degree heat in a mid-afternoon with the sun beating down upon your skin you just can’t appreciate what raw desert heat feels like.

But I digress.

So here I am, lollying around in the pool and it’s truly amazing just how quiet the surrounding are. In this subdivision, you can sit on the patio and see at least eight houses; nevertheless, I’m still amazed at just how quiet the nights are around here. I can’t speak for the houses out our back, but I do know that the houses on our sides and front are all occupied, so I doubt it’s like some of the towns to our south and east where builders built entire subdivisions that are now empty except for one or two families that have decided to gut out the housing slump.

But I digress. Again.

Thoughts flit in and out of my mind while I’m floating. Tonight I’m thinking all sorts of crazy things – like how Olivia Newton-John had to have been a huge George Harrison “All Things Must Pass” fan, since she recorded the songs “What Is Life” and If Not For You” (the latter her first big hit) from that album. She gives both a good try, but I have to say, it’s hard to listen to Olivia’s renditions next to George’s originals – quite a difference in substance there, if you know what I mean. Course, she was a heckuva lot easier on the eyes than George ever was…

I’m also thinking about the Goodboys this past weekend encouraging me to upgrade my current decades-old CD player with a MP3 player. Like they were saying, why limit myself to five or six surf music CDs when I can have literally a thousand surf tunes to shuffle through on an weekend day? But then I start looking at all the software available to help people organize their MP3 collection and I start getting the heebie-geebies. I don’t know…. I’m really not a techno-junkie.

Back to “All Things Must Pass” for a second – I remember this post from way back when I first started this weblog. Considering I wrote this before my spritual re-awakening of the past year, all I can say is the Holy Spirit had to have been planting seeds I simply could not foresee at that time working the harvest with. But that’s why they say that, no matter how hopeless and daunting things might seem, with God all things are possible. When I wrote that post, I was absolute choked by the darkness surrounding me. I remember it, and believe me – it was real. And something I’d rather not experience again. God be praised.

We paid off another credit card today. Five down, four to go. Talk about painful! But like Dave Ramsey says, it takes twice as long to get out of the debt you put yourself into.

The rabbits are also on my mind tonight, those buggers. Our baby rabbit Peanut is, frankly, a bitch. Not in a bad way (well, at least not totally), but in a mischievous way, for sure. The other day she got loose and wrangled her way inside our couch – from underneath! That’s right, she somehow ripped the cloth under the couch and hopped up inside. Took us an hour to figure out where she had hidden herself. Rabbits sure like out of the way places – but that’s what you have to expect with prey animals. You gotta laugh…

The clouds are moving kinda fast tonight from the southeast to northwest. Word is, there’s a chance we get some moisture from the remnants of what was once Hurricane Dolly this weekend. That would be cool. Anytime you can get rain this time of year out here, that’s a good thing.

A shout out to my friends Jerome and Paul tonight – for some reason you’re on my mind.