sweating and spending

We're deep in the Phoenix mid-summer blast furnace, or sweatshop, I guess I should say. Most years, the weather shifts from hellish hot and dry to hellish hot and humid. In a way it's sort of comforting, because it's a little like summers in the midwest, where I grew up. Except it rarely stays above a hundred degrees every day all summer in Kansas (well, at least for now--give global warming a couple of decades...).

I'm still plugging away at freelancing. I agreed to do a travel piece (enticing people into coming here, not jetting off to a cooler locale) for the local convention and visitors bureau, and so I'm checking things out on that side of town before I write the piece. I've got another IABC newsletter piece to finish and edit, which will then get recycled into something I pitch to another (for-pay) writing magazine.

I've got a couple of pro bono things cooking, too. I'm advising a local charity on their publicity efforts, and I volunteered (no, insisted) that I shoot a video documentary of my parents' 50th wedding anniversary party, which took place in late June. As I load the footage onto the computer to edit it, I'll try to load some stills onto the blog for my circle of a half-dozen readers to enjoy.

The trip back to Kansas City was fun, if brief. Scooter couldn't come, so that was sad. But I was there just long enough to enjoy an unusually cool (80 degrees) weekend, take a couple of walks through the old 'hood, and enjoy the party and a Sunday evening dinner at my sister's house in Spring Hill. If I'd been there any longer I would have missed Scooter too much--and when I got home, I would have missed my hometown too much. Three days was just enough.

Our next magazine issue at work will feature a special section on our university's president. Writing about your boss's boss's boss is always sort of a minefield. But we'll do our best, and see how it goes. :)