Too hot to do anything today. I got up as early as I could and went to the Big Box store for a new supply of sinus pills and twelve-packs of diet green tea with citrus. I got to the coffeeshop by the university and stayed there 'til lunchtime. I came back here just after noon--- too hot to do anything but sleep.

Taci in Portland writes that the warm weather suits me in the summer. I am in a sundress today with nothing underneath, and last night was in short camo shorts with no underwear. It is the season for mojitos in a gazebo and perhaps a carefully-chosen cigarette or two, preferably with leggy comrades... I've known Taci on line for more than nine years now. She's a lovely, ethereal semi-goth girl who does excellent work as a stylist. I value her comments and support--- and she's been an on-line friend for longer than almost anyone.

I'm going to order an iPod tomorrow. I'll do the 80gb Classic in black. That should give me serious capacity for loading all my CDs and various things I can get people to send me. And it will have video capacity...just in case. I'll get a protection plan with it--- that seems like good advice from Lissy at emigree. And I will get a portable charger. I always obsess over things where batteries can run down. I keep extra chargers for the little Nokia keitai in my office and my briefcase and have a car charger as well. So of course I must get a portable charger for the iPod.

I'll still need to download iTunes and master uploading CDs and organising music on the iPod. Lissy at emigree first suggested an 8gb Nano, but I'd rather have excess capacity to grow into. And the 80gb Classic is physically larger. I need something that has a bit more heft to it--- and a slightly larger screen.

Any lovely clever wicked tech-capable readers and correspondents are vur' much invited to send any other advice I might find useful. All advice is appreciated.

Swing Out Sister is doing "Somewhere Deep in the Night". I've loved Corinne Drewery's voice since ever Lacey told me about the band long, long ago.

I should go outside tonight and swim laps just to be able to feel dark water around me. I still hope that one of the bikini girls will sneak out to go skinny-dipping after midnight. I saw a girl do that once when I lived in Birmingham--- walk out onto her balcony, shrug off her silk robe, and dive naked from her balcony down into the pool. 0300 hours on a summer's night--- she was slender and lithe and beautiful. I envied her the grace of the dive. She swam the length of the pool, jumped out, and dashed back up the stairs to her apartment. All I could think of was that if ever I'd tried that--- not that any male should be swimming naked to begin with ---I'd have missed the pool and cracked my head on the concrete...or dashed upstairs and discovered that I'd locked myself out. So I did envy the girl...and hope that some lovely bikini girl will at least swim naked tonight while I stand back from my window and watch her glide through dark water.

This morning at the coffeeshop I did make a note. Past a certain age--- one's mid-twenties ---it's difficult for a single male to travel and stay with friends. Past a certain age, couch-surfing just isn't done. Couples can stay with other couples--- there's the expectation of being in a tight dyad, and that couples only associate with other couples ---but single males are rarely welcome. Girls can stay with college roommates or friends up into their thirties, but that doesn't work for single males. I suppose I could stay with my aunt over in western Louisiana if I wanted to visit there, but...there's no one in SETX (Houston or Galveston) where I could stay with, let alone Atlanta or Santa Fe or NYC or Boston or Miami. Pod hotel time, if one can afford it. There's no way to stay with male friends--- it's not even done to have male friends. And female friends are unlikely to want to have me show up in the flesh. Being a single male is just far too disruptive all the way round to be a welcome guest, however polite one is. So much for emulating Donna Tartt and becoming a "professional houseguest"...

One thing that Arthur Phillips did get dead-on in "Prague": Budapest in the early '90s was filled with little jazz clubs. There was a full run of punk clubs, too--- but that had more to do with nationalist thugs and German turista kids in combat boots than with a music scene. Half the late-night streets in both Buda and Pest had little jazz clubs that had appeared out of nowhere, playing LPs from the 1950s and with jazz musicians who'd either been silenced and sent into internal exile in 1956 or else were kids who'd grown up listening to American jazz from the Fifties and early Sixties on smuggled records. Budapest was a place where Chet Baker and the Clash existed, and everything in between had never happened. The Small Pika wrote me from Osaka to say that jazz was still a living, vital thing in Japan in the Year Five. I like that--- and I'm vur' fond of Japanese jazz. Budapest when last I was there was still living on music left over from the days before 1956--- or before World War Two.

I can feel anticipatory buyer's remorse already setting in on the iPod. I will need hand-holding on it. I can see that. I'm the last person in North America who's never had an iPod or even used one. I've never even downloaded music onto a laptop. I've always stayed vur' safe--- listening to CDs, never risking falling off the learning curve. So I will need encouragement. I'm tech-averse. I do know that. I hate the thought of getting new technology and Getting It Wrong. That's been the thing that derailed most of my life--- not just fear of Getting It Wrong, but fear of being seen to Get It Wrong. I did that with the manuscript of my doctoral thesis, with my law school grades, and with my regional accent fears.

Gui Boratto's "Chromophobia" is playing--- a CD Lissy at emigree recommended. She's someone else whose music recommendations I trust. I do love electronica and ambient music. I need to ask Sarah at sarahmarie02 for more recommendations of her own. And I think ninjastyle as well. I like "Chromophobia"...though I wish I could be hearing it on a dance floor with a lovely partner.

It's still lonely here... I could go stand out on the balcony and just watch the lights on the pool, or maybe go out on the upstairs patio and watch the blue stucco house over at Nr. 937 and try to infer stories about the blonde sugarbaby girl. Whatever I do, though, there won't be voices and conversations and laughter. I'm still not part of any conversational networks. I'm still only an EVP voice.

I'll have an 80gb iPod Classic soon enough. I'll learn how to load songs onto it. But I still won't have voices around me. I'm still only and ever a ghost.