After 13 days in a row of being @thePool for at least an hour, I am afraid that with this noontime air temperature of 48℉, I'm gonna have to cancel today's session. I'm No Stranger to the Rain—I metaphorically and literally thrive in it. Around 5-6 PM yesterday, I was out there as the rain punched holes through my pool's surface tension.

But as far as mud, I had enough of mud in '98 working a hand auger to grab test dirt for All-in-One gas stations. And the good times were the new sites. The bad one was at an Exxon that had gasoline infused into the soil; I was at the bottom of an 8-foot hole, delighted that there wasn't a smoke nearby. That convenience store had an item that I ate there and inexplicably have never found again: chicken jerky. Shouldn't that be ubiquitous?

And then there was that time at 17 when mud's grasped a hold of my truck all the way up to its bumper when I was eager to try out a section of TN-385 2½ years before its completion in September '98. Ahh, my boots were made for walkin'.

As for today's rain's mud, it is looking doubtful that I'll be ripping greenery down. There was some talk about getting the city inspector out to take a gander at our sidewalk forms to the door, but I'm guessing they won't give him a holler 'til ol' Hulk comes by for those old concrete segments, which have decorated my lawn for nearly 3 weeks now. They jackhammered one segment, and I was actually the one to throw it onto my ol' trusty Ace Hardware wheelbarrow with my $6 Harbor Freight gloves and cart it to my contractor's work truck. So, I guess I am The Hulk. Makes sense.

This Reelin' in the Years reminds me of a recent experience. I stepped inside Stewart Brothers Hardware on Hwy 70 and I might as well have ridden up there in a DeLorean. It was as if I was a teen again. I remember the times walking over there with my Dad looking for some odd bolt to get a Chief 17 running or whatever for our print shop was in a bay down the alleyway next door. I used to walk up daily to their receiving bay to dump trash into the bin there—on one occasion on that dumpster walk with the two-wheeler, I specifically remember listening to a new song by Garth Brooks: That Summer. Later, to my Dad's chagrin, I threw away my 1979 F-250's topper in that bin—hey, I sat at The Cook Kid's Table in '94-'95. Our print shop moved out to Somerville in my college years, but would come back to that same area again, after my time working with my parents, this time just across the parking lot at the new structure.

I mean, MAYBE Stewart Brothers has had one upgrade in all the years for I spied some LCD monitors (those displays emerged to replace CRTs in the mid-00's). There was even the same woman there that was there some 28-31 years ago. Stewart Brothers imparts on me the same feelings as I do about my Great Oaks Church at the Barn—but that store STILL exists. After spending the past couple of years around the ghosts of UofM for even 2012 is dust in the wind, it is encouraging to see something unchanged by time.