I can’t believe my first car did not have air conditioning. I mean, I paid $300 for it, and I’m sure if it did have AC, I would have disconnected it to get a faster 0-60 time, because that and a loud stereo were about all I cared about then. But I was thinking about the fact that I spend all day indoors in the AC, and I go into our enclosed garage and get in the car with AC, and sometimes it can be days before I’m exposed to the outside air. That’s great when it’s 95 out, but it’s also weird, which made me think about life with no car AC.

That Camaro had an all-black interior, and no pleasant new-car smell anymore, so getting in after parking for an afternoon in the sun was never pleasant. And the only antidote to the summer sun was opening the huge side windows, and maybe running the vent fan setting, which worked about as effectively as crepe paper body armor. But I spent a lot of damn time in that car back then. And I remember driving down Cleveland Road, the back way to Mishawaka from Elkhart, thinking about how the soup of hot air would flood the car every time I stopped at an intersection.

The Camaro had no AC. My first Escort had no AC, but it also had no right side, so it never got hot. My Turismo had AC, but it was disconnected when I got it. Also, that car lasted a school year and blew up before the summer, so I never needed air. VW: disconnected air. Mustang: it had AC, but it was almost out of freon. If you drove a long roadtrip, it would spin enough to produce some cold, but otherwise it was useless. So that’s almost a decade of cars without AC, and then my second Escort (no thanks to Evergreen Ford) had a very good AC system, and the new car smell that made you want to keep the windows closed.

New car smell, by the way, is carcinogenic outgassing from the plastic. What’s good is bad.

I still have many fond memories of driving around in the summer, though, in that huge black beast of a car. It’s so strange: my current economy wagon-thing has more BHP than my Camaro, and weighs half as much, and gets maybe twice the milage if not more. And I was always horribly broke back then, making something like $100 a week if I was lucky, and there probably hasn’t been a day in 2007 that I had less than my 1987 net worth in my wallet without even trying. But my brain still goes back there.

I still have this conflict that I want this time right now to be the same, or bigger than what was then. Like when I’m 50, I want to be thinking “man, back in 2007…”, and I probably will be, but it’s easy to overlook that. (Hell, sometimes the right song hits the shuffle on my iPod and I’m thinking back to 1997, and I have absolutely no intention of ever going back to Seattle, and I have no desire to revisit any part of my life back then.) And the part that gets me is that I don’t want to ever write another Summer Rain, or dick around with short stories trying to capture some long-ago part of my past. But when I start thinking about these things, I do want to write them down, or use them as source material. It’s so tempting, but it’s also not what I want to do anymore.

I went back to “book three”, which is tentatively called The Device, and I keep yo-yoing between that and some other random project of the week, but I know I need to finish this first. I’m 65,000 words into it; it’s three parts, with the first one done, the second one getting there, and the third pretty mapped out. What I have now is pretty basic and doesn’t have the thickness or level of weirdness Rumored does. But the first draft of Rumored didn’t either - it took seven major drafts and about five years worth of work to get it there.

The zine deadline is tomorrow, and it is 16,500 words short of #11’s length. Maybe there will be some last-minute additions, and I guess I have to write an introduction, which is like a thousand words. But shit, I can’t keep waiting. I will just widen the margins or something.

I went to the last Rockies-Padres game of the series yesterday, which wasn’t part of the six-pack or the other two loose tickets I had, but just part of a general scheme to try and see each MLB team in play at some point. I think by the end of the year, I will be about halfway there. Anyway, a quick bulleted list:

• I am running out of witty observations about Coors Field, and paying more attention to the game. Fun for me, but it means I have less to write about here.
• It was HOT yesterday, close to 100, and even though I wore SPF 60, I got sunburned. I also wore my leg brace (because it’s acting weird lately) and now I have a perfect red circle burned into my knee, where there’s a little hole in the fabric.
• My seats were in 331 again, but in the last row, so there was a wall behind me, and I got a tiny bit of shade.
• A guy sat next to me that reminded me of the George Sibley character from Six Feet Under and talked to me through the entire game. Normally, I would have beaten him down, but he was a walking baseball encyclopedia, and we talked the whole time about the game, which was great. Because of this, I didn’t listen to my radio, but I didn’t really need to.
• A ton of kids were there, from some school or maybe a church thing. There were entire blocks of seating with just kids wearing matching bright yellow or bright orange or bright red shirts. Aside from the general congestion, the kids cheered at 100% for every damn thing that happened for about three innings, then they got bored and shut up.
• Aaron Cook (Who I still think looks like a pirate) pitched the entire game in only 74 pitches, which I think ties a MLB record. He also had three hits, all non-bunts which is not bad for a pitcher. In the 8th, everyone expected him to get switched out with a pinch hitter. When he came out to the mound and basically said “look, I’m not a pussy”, there was probably the biggest round of applause I’ve heard at that stadium, and everyone stood up and cheered him.
• The Padres has some monumentally stupid fielding errors. The Rockies had a couple of all-out-dive-catches that were excellent.
• In one of those Rockies catches, someone (and I forget who) dove and dug in, but caught the ball, but then a bunch of people came out on the field. Everyone was thinking “oh shit, someone got injured”, but it turns out everyone was staring down at this divot in the outfield, and a groundskeeper put it back, and all was well.
• Matsui was on second and there was a grounder hit out, and he probably should not have run at all, but he took off like a bat out of hell and made it home. That guy can run like a motherfucker!
• Todd Helton still needs to shave off that goatee. If he really wants to get traded to Boston, he should shave off that shit so they think he’s way younger.

Next game is the Brewers - actually I’m going to a day game an a night game. I need to find some better sunscreen. I’m also thinking about bringing a small soft-side cooler with a few water bottles in it, instead of paying $27.50 for a 6-ounce bottle of lukewarm water at the park.

I’m still at work on a couple of different writing projects, and getting the zine rolling will be the big 800-pound gorilla. I have almost everything in. If you’ve promised me a story, get off your ass and finish up, before the train leaves the station. (Okay, too many metaphors for today.)

First of all, I’m wasting a lot of times writing reviews on Yelp. So go to jkonrath.yelp.com and check that out. It would also be cool if some of you joined and hooked up with me. I don’t know why, but I know a certain lawyer in the Chicago area that has an encyclopedic knowledge of dive bars and Harley joints and it would be interesting to hear about some of that. Yes, it’s another one of those “create content for us so we can make money” things. But here in Denver, I’ve found that the only types of restaurant reviews are the prefabricated ones that linkfarm sites use that are essentially useless for finding a place to eat, or the newspaper reviews from the places that are completely brown-nosing the local restaurant scene, and providing useless information. Like all reviews for Best Indian Restaurant pointed to this one place, saying “they’re really authentic! they’re really formal! It’s so great! GLGLGLGLGLGLG!” and we went and it was on par with one of the places in New York where taxi drivers buy food between shifts. So, it was good to see an alternative, and I’ve found like 19 restaurants that I want to try out here. It’s also fun to rag on places in Elkhart.

I have been working on two writing projects, so I haven’t had much time to do anything on here. There is also some weird construction project across the street, where it looks like they’re stringing a huge piece of sewer pipe underground from one block to another. There are a couple dozen pieces of heavy machinery, a water truck, what looks like a CO2 or maybe coolant tanker, a ton of guys in orange vests standing around doing nothing, and about two weeks of jackhammering, concrete sawing, and other high-decibel noise that you don’t want happening right across the street from your desk. But it looks like it will end soon. And hey, I have a laptop now! I mean I did before, but now my main machine is a laptop, so it’s very easy to unplug and go elsewhere. I did that this afternoon: I had to bring the car to the dealer for its first 3750-mile oil change and tire kick. I sat in the waiting room with the laptop, logged onto their Wifi, and basically had my entire home setup with me, minus iTunes, iPhoto, and the big main monitor. But all of my mail, all of my writing, all of my files - it was all there. Very nice.

So it turns out (tentatively) that we are going to three of four Cubs games in August. We had tickets for a night game (Thursday, I think) and the Sunday afternoon game. Turns out one of Sarah’s coworkers is a rabid Cubs fan, and they bought a block of 100 seats in one of the upper deck sections. they’re having a huge roof party so everyone can get loaded on Old Style, then march over to Coors Field and act like heathens during the game. So yeah, we’re in. Well, I don’t drink though, so no Old Style. I’m also not sure where I stand on the whole Cubs thing. I realize a certain author in the Chicagoland area has a strong allegiance to the the team (unless maybe it is at the point of the season where he’s rebuilding his Lou Piniella hate shrine in his basement) so maybe I should choose my words carefully. In choosing my alliances, there are the following facts:

• Lots of family from Chicago; reinfornces that Chicago nostalgia thing.
• Many childhood memories of Hari Cari drinking excessively and singing drunkenly on WGN.
• The first year I decided to follow baseball, I picked the Cubs as my “hometown” team, since Indiana didn’t have baseball. They finished the season 64-98. I decide not to follow baseball for about 25 more years.
• I’m struggling with the concept of being a Rockies fan, and I’m starting to really like them.
• There’s the whole “support your home team” thing, and not wanting to be a total piece of shit like Yankees fans at away games.
• The Brewers are ahead of the Cubs by 3 1/2 games right now, and if there’s any team I would rather follow aside from the Rockies, it would be the Brewers.
• I realize Sammy Sosa no longer plays for the Cubs, but he’s a bat-corking piece of shit juicer (sorry, alleged juicer.)

So yeah, tough call either way. Maybe I will just not wear any teamwear and keep my mouth shut.

I have always named my computers after weapons of mass destruction, or general devices of warfare. I named my new machine 245t. Look it up.

My memory is still not here. Today, allegedly. I have 1 gig in now, and I will swap the 2x512 for 1x1 and 1x2 gig, so 3. Fun.

I am partially sick (probably from the rain, although everyone says getting sick from the rain is a wives’ tale, but it always happens to me) and it looks partially sick outside, so that’s not good. I’m also still mis-typing every third word on this damn keyboard. I should give up and go back to the old MS ergo.

I lied about only two more games this season - there are now 8. I bought one of the mini-series 6-pack deals. The new games are:

• Milwaukee Brewers - 06 AUG 2007 at 07
• Chicago Cubs - 09 AUG 2007 at 07
• Chicago Cubs - 12 AUG 2007 at 01
• San Diego Padres -07 SEP 2007 at 07
• Los Angeles Dodgers - 19 SEP 2007 at 06
• Washington Nationals - 24 AUG 2007 at 07

Those are all sets of tickets in the infield upper reserved. So right behind home plate, but up high. It was insanely cheap though - twelve total tickets for $216. I also have single day game tickets for the Brewers and Giants. And of course I’ll be buying those Rockies postseason playoff tickets when they go on sale. (Well, maybe not this year.)

Okay I am going to rewire the universe and get this keyboard figured out.

I know I said my next baseball game was the Brewers next month, but Sarah had to work today, and I thought it would be a good idea to see the last game in the Rockies-Phillies series. Pictures are here. Here’s the commentary:

• My seat was in Lower Reserved Infield, section 329, 6th row. If you know where the press box is behind home plate, there’s a set of corporate boxes above it, and then this section above that. The topmost concourse has two sets of seats, a handful lower, and a bunch upper, and these were the lower. These were actually really good seats, especially for $30, because you look right down at the entire field and can see everything.
• I got another Papa John’s rubber pizza kit, and it wasn’t as great as last time.
• It was 90 degrees out, and there was a chance of thunderstorms. I didn’t really think this would matter much.
• The balcony up on the 300-level has a really kick-ass view of downtown.
• The national anthem was sung by some paramilitary jesus-freak organization and they sang so bad, it was hilarious. Back when I worked in a theater and the first-graders would sing “Here Comes Santa Claus” for the christmas show, they would be more in tune.
• The game was a game, and a few things went on, but I won’t get into it. It was a game.
• I had my new AM/FM/TV radio, which made it a lot more interesting, except for when they went on endless commercial breaks.
• So in the 5th or 6th inning, it starts to get dark. There are lightning strikes in the distance, and thunder booms across the stadium. They turn on the stadium lights. Big clouds start rolling in. The guys on the radio say a huge storm is going to hit just after three. I look at my watch: 2
  .
• It starts raining. People freak out and start leaving. I don’t care too much. Remember the part about it being 90? I’m surprised they aren’t charging people for the rain.
• Then it starts really raining. The groundskeeper dudes are trying to roll the huge tarp over the field. Right after they open it up, these huge bursts of gale-force winds hit the field, and some of the groundskeepers hanging onto the tarp GO AIRBORNE. Half of the tarp flips inside-out.
• The Rockies have already retreated to the clubhouse. The Phillies are all on the bench, getting drenched. They see these dudes flying in the air, and the entire 40-man roster plus coaches and trainers runs out to the field and tries to hold down the tarp.
• I’m in the tunnel approaching my section, trying to take pictures. It is raining 90 miles an hour sideways into the tunnel. I’m about as wet as you would be if you stood in a shower for five minutes in your street clothes. It is pitch black outside, except for the stadium lights and the lightning.
• Outside of the section, there’s a narrow section where the roof sticks out about ten feet where it is more or less dry. About 20,000 people are in that section. It looks like a disaster movie, except they’re still selling beer.
• The radio station has used the rain delay as an opportunity to run back-to-back commercials constantly, except to come on every 20 minutes and say “still raining!”
• About an hour later, the rain stops. Half of the people have left, the rest are trying to dry off their seats with Papa John’s napkins.
• The tarp rolls off, and they quickly rake stuff and chalk down lines.
• Ten minutes later, it is blue skies and 90.
• The Rockies lose, 8-4.

Anyway, weird experience. And now I must go caption photos. Or not.