It was a quiet day. I spent most of it inside my air conditioned office fixing more broken computers. I’ve made good progress this week, but mostly, it’s been full of solitude.

To break up the monotony, I walked around the neighborhood near my school a few times throughout the day. During one walk, I was greeted by an elementary school student playing with her sister in her yard. “Hi Mario,” she said, and just those words broke whatever melancholy I had been feeling at the moment. “How’s your summer going?” I asked her. “Good,” she said, then ran across her yard and began to play again. Later, I ran into a recent graduate and his girlfriend also going for a walk, and we waved and said our hellos. I returned to my office and cherished both my brief but valuable moments of human contact and the very refreshing AC.

The National Weather Service has issued a heat advisory in my area for this coming Tuesday through Friday night. Forecasts predict triple digit temperatures, and if I still lived in San Diego, I might be annoyed but since I live in Montana, where the weather can fluctuate from snow one minute to sunny and clear skies the next, I am weirdly looking forward to 90 degree days again.

One way I will try and enjoy this heatwave is by driving in my nicely air conditioned car and listening to James A. Reeve’s newly launched Midnight Radio newsletter, “a dispatch of five thematic songs + a brief ramble delivered ‘round midnight on the first and fifteenth of each month.” His first broadcast is called, fittingly enough, Heatwave, and it is an incredible and eclectic mix of music with a whole lot of static and reverb. James has, if not the best taste in music, the coolest taste in music of anyone I know or follow. I’ve been reading his blog for many years now, and he ends many of his entries with a song that is usually new to me and very good. Both his blog and newsletter are great, and I recommend both.