Gotta love a guy who wears Prada

Sometimes it all goes wrong.

OK, I promised I wouldn’t blog anymore about death. Apparently I lied. Sorry.

She’s in a box next to me. Sitting on the floor, in the corner, next to my backpack. In a little blue velveteen bag.

My beautiful blonde girl.

It’s remarkable, actually. They didn’t ask me for identification, or ask me if it was ok to take her. The mortician just gave me some form to sign, and shook my hand, and I took her away.

Like a bag of groceries. Or something similarly mundane.

She sat on the back seat of her Jag all the way down here to the desert.

She never rode in the backseat when she was alive. You kidding? She was ALWAYS driving that car. I think I got to park it once. But I’m not sure of that, now that I say it.

She got to drive my Porsche, it only seems fair that I’d have driven the Jag. But apparently not.

Well, now I have driven it.

JR gave the car to our friend. But she wanted to ride in it one more time before she gave it away. I was supposed to drive her. We talked about it during that period where she was better. I was going to take her out for ice cream.

Then she got worse.

She never got that ride.

Until yesterday.

She loved Coldstone Creamery. Her favorite was Vanilla Bean, with brownies, marshmallows, and fudge sauce mixed in. We used to go down the street to the one that was open later – since I often got home from work late – and take the dogs with us. The dogs got kiddie sized portions – Minnie got vanilla, Tyrone got banana – and JR and I would sit on the tailgate of that car, eating ours, laughing at the kids’ efforts to get EVERY last drop of ice cream out of their little holders.

They got so used to it that they learned the words “ice cream”. JR used to spell it. You know, I-C-E-C-R-E-M. Yup, she would always misspell it. It was cute.

No surprise, the dogs learned to spell. Annoying little rugrats.

I need to take them out for ice cream again when I get home.

If it all comes true
And our dreams fall like bombs from the blue
Oh my love,
Come stand by me….
If it all comes real
Confirming this fear that I feel
Oh my love
Come stand by me…
--Chagall Guevara

It’s hot here in the desert. About 104 today. That’s warmer than I’m used to.

Our friend with the new car likes it. We drove around in it all day today.

I guess she’s “my” friend now, not “our” friend, eh? Anyway.

We had the top down for a while – but then we both noticed that we’d forgotten sunscreen. Oops. Top went back up. Not in time to prevent pinkage of my neck, and her shoulders.

We spent a lot of time in malls today. Way too much time. Don’t get me wrong, I love shopping – a lot, really. Good lord, have you seen how I dress? I have to love it – of course NOBODY likes what I buy, other than me, but I like to buy it! However, there is a natural limit to how much time one can spend in a mall, before the hypoxia gets to you.

Have you ever noticed that there seems to be less oxygen in malls? I find myself getting more and more stupid, the longer I stay there.

But perhaps that is a selling point? Do dumb people buy more? Do they return merchandise less often? Do they buy more stuff at stupid stores? What’s the deal?

Anyway, I was sitting there, on a bench, waiting for my friend. She was interminably trying on skirts. Dude, I mean, really, how long can it take? I’ve been shopping with women before. Just never with a woman THIS slow. Anyway, she’s my friend, I was hanging out, trying to breathe.

But I noticed something, whilst breathing.

There are a lot of beautiful women in this city.

Cities have personalities in that way. Some have more beautiful women than others. LA for example, has a lot of pretty women – have you been there? Dude, look around.

Phoenix is similar. Not as many lovely women, but a lot.

Many cities? Not as much.

Now, I’m not saying there are ONLY attractive women in LA, or Phx, but rather saying that the probability of a lovely woman, given presence in LA, is higher than, say, the likelihood in Conway, Arkansas.

If you are into Bayesian statistics, that would be, I guess P{BW|LA} > P{BW|AR}, if you assume that “BW” denotes “beautiful woman”, LA denotes LA and AR denotes Arkansas.

OK, that was kinda geeky, even for me. Let’s ditch Bayes, and his notation, for now.

But let’s stay with the theme. There are, indeed, places with more lovely women.

We have already mentioned LA and Phoenix. I also think that Singapore is great.

Surprisingly, Paris? The most romantic city in the world? Not so much, in my experience. Great food, though. And the Musee d’Orsay is one of the best places in the world.

I hear that Portugal has lovely women, at least currently. But I can’t speak to that personally, rather only through travelogues.

I wonder if there are “good man cities” as well? I am not really qualified to judge this one, although one of my friends just got back from Sweden with an unqualified positive vote for the men there.

I’m still mad about the red card in the England world cup match. I think the final will be fun, and I wonder if we need additional border guards in the aftermath?

I haven’t been on my motorcycle yet, I need to get out tomorrow and ride. Maybe up South Mountain. Who knows. Maybe I should take JR for a ride – she’d have liked this bike, although she never got to see it live.

It’s 95 degrees now – at almost 11pm. My friend is asleep on the couch. It’s very quiet here.

I’m either lonely, or peaceful. I’m not sure which. Maybe I should go for a ride now. Or go light some more candles.

Anyway, the view from this taxi is improving. I can see lights, and cool buildings in the distance, and the odor of smoke isn’t too bad, and the air conditioner works. I think I’ll hang out here for a while, and see what happens.