It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood!

(tl;dr version: nice weather and skateboarding rule)

It's been a weird year for Houston, weather-wise. June was brutally hot. July was, to nobody's surprise, also hot. August was a little more mellow, but only in comparison to what it usually is. September sucked: the temperatures didn't seem to drop, and the humidity was awful. October, when most of us would agree that H-Town starts catching up with the seasonal rotation thing, has been a little more forgiving, though it's still been humid as shit. Today, however, Mother Nature has dropped a boon on my fair city in the form of mid-70s temperatures, clear skies, and steady breezes. This, my friends, is the way things should be. Like I told a buddy at the skatepark earlier today, I understand why people are willing to shell out the fat cash to live in SoCal, where days like this are routine.

Even better, it's my Saturday. I had a rad green smoothie for breakfast, then went to the skatepark to make the most of the weather and drop off some Tracker Fastracks for a buddy looking to set up a cruiser. I saw, for the first time in months, one of the guys who was a stalwart of the 8 AM scene when Jamail still opened that early and when I didn't work there. Threw down some increasingly solid feeble grinds on the curbs outside the park, and started plotting my conquest of a particular quarterpipe via backside rock n' rolls. Stopped at Half Price Books and walked out with a couple promising books, one of which is by Stephen Batchelor, who I can't recommend enough if you want a clear, meaningful, and modern approach to Buddhism. Came home, drank some Koenig Ludwig weissbier- 'cause it's that kind of day, dudes- and jammed some MC Frontalot and 3 Inches of Blood. Later, I'll probably go lay waste to some neighborhood curbs and/or do some/all of the following: take a nap, read, visit my brother, smoke cigarettes, go back to the skatepark, and maybe some things I haven't even thought about yet. Days like this are why we're put on earth.

Shout-outs to Aaron Estrada, War Master, Santa Monica Airlines, D, Daniel, Richard, tahini, cheap lighters, and West Alabama Street.


Impervious to fire, impervious to steel,
D.A.S.