It wasn't too bad this summer, the heat. Still, there were a couple tough days. Bright sticky mornings that escalated into critically smoggy afternoons. You'd be loading up your tools, halfway through your first cup of coffee, and the sweat would come. Only 10 hours later in an air-conditioned bar on the way home would it would stop. I ain't complaining though. I've labored in worse heat for less money...South Texas, Phoenix. And I've tied steel in the snow back east- 9 days out of 10, LA beats all. But the smog...the smog humps your soul uninvited-like. The smog lends to the air a perceptible density that hinders movement and clouds thought. Angelinos commuting under metric tons of visible poison gas are spared the primal, adrenaline squirtin', fear that tornado clouds, sheet-lightning, and other modes of "real" weather can inspire, but suffer instead a more complex reaction. A reaction I call agora-claustra-phobia, or "the fear of being buried alive outside". When it gets really bad like that, I abandon the charade of productivity, seek out the dank refuge of a tavern, and call an official "smog-day".

Whereupon I proceed to lurk like a kuhli loach...peering beyond the entrance of my ceramic cave...watching the other fish push their way through this dirty, dirty, aquarium of ours.