Here's what I was looking at as I drove to the gym this morning for my workout -


                             

This is a decidedly western vista - you won't see this in Arkansaw. (yes, I meant to spell it that way). It makes you wanna say "Hnyah!" right out loud.

"Hnyah!" is a Western exclamation, which usually involves horses or somesuch. It is usually followed by the crack of a whip - listen to any amount of Clint Black (who is more "western" than "country") and you will hear a "Hnyah!" or two.

The CarPod was shuffling through some good western tunes this morning, during that drive - Tequila Sunrise and some Clint Black and "Cheatin'" - which is Western by virtue of being by the Gin Blossom (of Tempe, Arizona) and Country because it has a steel guitar, twangy bar/cheatin' boyfriend/country boy in big city lyrics,  and (with bad geography) it has Galveston as being located in Georgia.

It would be monsoon season here in the Desert Southwest - okay, it IS monsoon season. We have the monsoon itself (that being the retrograde wind out of the East) and we have the humidity, but we haven't had the storms yet. And it's the storms that make the season.

While I'm typing here on my keyboard in the Desert Southwest, looking out through the cactus and palms at New River Mesa under a Western sky, my son - the child that we moved away from Alabama so that he'd have the opportunity to grow up in the great, wide world, the child that we took skiing when he was 3 and rock climbing when he was 7, the child that has been from Florida to the Yukon and from the Big Island in Hawaii to New Hampshire - that child is sitting in the kitchen.

Playing Dungeons and Dragons.

I think that's pretty much the definition of a "lost cause".

Hnyah!