I'm forgoing a couple chances to go to the movies this week out of a sense of personal responsibility. I can afford the price of the tickets, but not the time it'll take. For example, I knew tonight I could take the evening for The Master on 70mm, but with a meeting this afternoon pushing cooking lunch for tomorrow until after I'd done my writing for the day, I couldn't make it out. I don't think I can do Wednesday afternoon, either.

I'm hopeful about Thursday afternoon, though.

In reasonably positive news regarding the writing, I managed 2000 words, which is unusual enough to warrant a mention.

Thunder all over, rain coming down steady and hitting hard, lightning slashing through the clouds for just a second and you hope you're lucky enough to be looking right where it is when it comes. Standing outside, knowing you're getting wet and knowing it's okay since you can get dry later, happy it's a reprieve from the last few days' heat. Light in the west, bright light, the light at the end of a day with nothing cutting through it since everything's washed out with the rain. It's still washing out, still coming down, far from a downpour or a gullywasher and far from over.

You walked over fast to get to your building and you're heading to the park, and you stop to feel the smell all around you, and you head to the rooftop.

It's harder to see from up there with nothing between you and the sunset, not even any clouds. What clouds there are hang south of you, gentle purples, or northwards, blue-gays. Lightning wherever it wants to find itself and thunder rumbling for many long seconds after. To the east, dark clouds, heavy and ready to burst. To the west, sunlight. Not even a sunset. Fading sunlight. The occasional, incidental glimpse on the horizon of a rainstorm far away, a patch of haze on an otherwise perfectly clear view to the end of the day as the sun moves down below the horizon. No clouds, no smog, no haze. Nothing but clear sky from here to forever to get in the way of the sunlight so all you see are the colors as they fade out. A sun that's too bright to look at, that hangs behind your eyelids if you do more than glance. A sun that's still up, low in the sky, the lightning that scrawls and sprawls across the sky at the same time dazzling in its own right, but nowhere near as steady.

Dark shapes of large birds and small flying creatures, artificial shapes of large and small boats on the river. Standing out against the colors fed into the river and sky by the last of the day's sunlight as it keeps going down. Fading, gently. Finally gently to your eyes because the rainstorm knocked out everything else hanging around in the sky. There's clouds above the sun, eastward close to you, and south and north and probably far west, too, but in that strip of the sky where there's sunlight there's nothing else. Just sunlight, just the sky getting filled with the colors of sunset.

The rain doesn't stop when you leave the roof. The sun's dipped below the horizon, and it's only a matter of time now. So you might as well take the moment to say farewell.

Someone moving out of my building got me another large haul of herbs and spices. I've genuinely got more cinnamon than I know what to do with. Flavored salts, also. Whole cloves. Allspice.

I took it as an opportunity to sort through what I already had in my apartment, setting a bunch aside that I don't need or want - bland red pepper flakes, old garlic powder - to compost later. There's also some old Trader Joe's ready-to-eat lentil pouches, and I figure if those were best by last year, there's no point in risking eating them when I can compost them instead.

I'm thinking spice-infused cold brew coffee, with the weather being what it is, and having enough spices to experiment a bit.