7:51 and it's still raining.

Has been all day.

A few years ago, North Florida went through a nasty summer drought. Every day I would wake up and check the weather station while I got ready for work. Every day it showed me seven days of grinning, taunting cartoon suns. All the plants died. Even the live oaks, with their deep, behemoth roots, drooped.

That's just not right for this part of the world. Florida is a swamp, a rain forest. They called it the Sunshine State to attract tourists, but a better name would be the Mildew State. The whole ecology depends on on just staying damp all the time. Turns out, so do I.

I started to get depressed. And I am not prone to depression. All those clear blue skies began to weigh on me. I fantasized about storms, about standing out in my yard and letting big, fat raindrops beat on me.  Every read the Ray Bradbury story All Summer in a Day? That opposite of that.

Eventually, frowning clouds showed up on the weather channel and we got some rain, thank god. I don't think I've complained about rain since then, though.

12:04 and trivia is over.

At least until tomorrow, when I do it all over again at Corner Pocket. I've been running bar trivia nights for almost 2 and a half years now. I have to say, as a side job it sure beats digging ditches. Right now, though, my Monday night crowd is slowly fading away. Are they tired? Bored? Some come on another night now, at another time. Some just disappeared.

I have to come up with more of a crowd. If there's no competition, what fun is it? I should promote a little heavier, come up with fun new rounds. Somewhere there is an untapped crowd, and I need to entice them down to answer unimportant questions and drink more than they should on Monday.

At 8:14, I am putting on boots.

When I was young - five? - I would drag the toes of my sneakers on the ground. I liked the sound, I think. It wore through them quickly, and my mom hated it. "I'm going to make you wear steel toed boots," she would threaten. Yeah.

Don't throw me in that brier patch.

They take some getting used to, heavy boots. Takes some practice to steer them. They swing your foot a little further and widen your stride. Not for nothing, the fairy tale trope of seven-league boots.

I get mine at the flea market. It takes a few shows, some jumping up and down on a concrete floor, to break down the last guy's wear patterns and imprint my own.

2:30 in the morning is a good time.

Oh, look, this is still a thing.

I should be working on a logo I'm doing, but the middle of the night is a good time to take a little break. I'm half watching an Irish film called The Snapper. Colm Meaney has large, Irish ears.

I'm supposed to go to the flea market in the morning. I need a new pair of jeans, and they didn't have my size last week. Hudson Falcons are playing in town tonight, and who doesn't like to look their best at a show?

Let us go and make our visit.

Today it was hot, damned hot. We marched firmly around the flea market and then washed away the sweat and dust with cold, clear water, thank god. The town is empty, everyone gone home for the summer or to the beach for the holiday or simply pinned in sucking down conditioned air. For the first time in fucked if I know how long, I'm watching the sun go down without the weight of gotta-get-it-done crouching on my shoulders. All my tasks can be safely put off until tomorrow, when the wet slap of summer returns and I have to hide out in my cool cave.

I love night time. Day time has its virtues, it's bright and active, but all the best things happen by moonlight. Grab a cool shower, put on clean clothes, go out in search of adventure. In search of booze and music and laughing women in short skirts. In search of shameful indulgence and one punch fights and I've been kicked out of better bars than this, motherfucker. Anything, everything, because dawn erases the board and lets you start over fresh.

All my friends are out of pocket or wrangling kids or broke or high or already drunk from afternoon birthday parties. No crew for this pirate cruise, I may have to brave it alone. If I can't find a designated driver, it may have to be heel toe, that's how you go, down the street to Midtown and draft beer. There's a good time to be had tonight, and I'm going to find it.

You call it paradise, we call it outside.

Some friends and I, a hand picked crew, intend to take to the boats next month and spend 4 or 5 days on Dog Island. I feel blessed to live here in North Florida, where a few nights in paradise is not too much to ask even in the face of unemployment or thieving politicians.

For a fat man who has to wear sunblock to go look at a full moon, I'm at my happiest in or next to my Gulf of Mexico. Oh, don't get me wrong - I'm scared to death of all that's lurking beneath the waves, unseeable especially with my glasses off to swim. But I was raised on the beach, in off season cottages and meandering state park coastlines and bars with walls open to the sea where I ate maraschino cherries in the afternoon while my dad played guitar.

This is what life on the island looks like.

In this case, a half dozen of us - old salts and new fish - will load up the coolers, the jugs of water, the playing cards and toilet paper and bump across the narrow space between land and strip. We'll drive wildly through the loose sand roads to keep from bogging down, and then we'll pile out and proceed to forget what day it is.

Aside from groceries and beer and a pair of clean drawers, my packing list:
- a lifetime of pirate adventure stories
- a broken in bandanna
- a brand new belt knife, in case of whittling or attack
- 50 years of friendship, combined, with my friends
- 1000 blank white cards
- 4 novels, 2 notebooks, and a fat handful of pens

Combined with rum and canned corned beef, that should get us through.

Bar Trivia in Tallahassee

I think y'all already know this, but I figured I'd announce it again. Every week I lead two nights of pub trivia at local bars. Monday nights, 10:30 pm to a little after midnight, at Mockingbird Cafe on N. Monroe and Tuesday nights, 7:30 to 9:30 pm, at Corner Pocket on Apalachee Parkway. Each has its own flavor. Mockingbird is slightly drunker, slightly older, slightly more hipster, a little looser in feel. Corner Pocket involves a lot of grad students so it's a little less sloppy. Either way, the questions are much the same.

I do 5 rounds of ten questions each. They usually (although not always) break down like this:
1st: picture pages (10 themed pictures to be identified, everything from hood ornaments to iconic people)
2nd: current events, always
3rd: third round is the nerd round - straight up trivia (inventions, geography, religion, etc)
4th: pop culture (cult movies, cartoon theme songs, food in fiction, etc)
5th: oddball stuff (kids' games, before and after, slang, etc)

Highest scoring teams win bar tabs at the end of the night. I encourage funny guesses, dirty team names, plenty of drinking, and tipping the bartenders. In a town where you can find bar trivia any night of the week, I try to stand out with plenty of questions, simple rules, and fun information. No premade questions here - I put together all the rounds myself every week.

So, if you're in Tally and you like to think and drink, come check it out. You'll have fun. For a weekly hint and any updates, join the official FB page at:
http://www.facebook.com/bartriviawithhank