This transition from spring to summer has been schizophrenic, seesawing between “no jacket required”-stifling humidity to bitter, Hemingway-depression. Count me in that latter camp: I’m no sunny flower and I love hot drinks too much. 60 degrees and a fine mist is the very definition of a happy Adam.

But who wants to read about the weather? Not this guy. I write about it enough, along with murders, mangled cars and burning houses most mornings at the Journal Star. I’ve come up with a new slogan for my news brief expertise:

Just give me the facts

and I’ll shit out 4 graphs.

I can no longer write casually. This is the literary equivalent of blowing your nose and hoping something becomes dislodged.

6/7/11 – notes from a walk through my neighborhood (written in sloppy pencil)

The veiled moon overhead, neighbors blasting Ben Harper in their backyard, majestic Moss Ave porches ablaze with Django Reinhart drifting from interior safety, runners breathless, bicyclists with lone headlamps mingling dangerously, cherries in my hand, a strange smell of burning house makes me nervous. The first timid fireflies trying their on/off switches for the first time, the stillness of air does nothing for my damp shirt, and yet few mosquitoes exist.