The temperature broke yesterday, climbing at daylight from around 70�, staying below 100� all day, and then cooling enough to allow us to sleep with the AC off and the windows open overnight. I didn't have a chance during the day to enjoy the change in the weather. Tuesdays and Thursdays are my busy days during this cycle, so for most of the day yesterday I was confined in classrooms in various buildings where the air-conditioning blasted chilled air despite the cool outdoor temperatures because no one knows where the thermostats are hidden. I suppose that might be a deliberate attempt to prevent thermostat battles between folks with different tolerances to heat and cold.

The temperatures have been low enough that I drove to and from work yesterday and today without turning on the AC in the car. Riding with the windows down removes a barrier, and today, a slow day for me, while driving from work with the barriers already down, I indulged my impulse to stop the car on the shoulder to take a picture of another memorial that I had first noticed about two weeks ago. The new marker stands about a tenth of a mile east of the marker I photographed and wrote about last January, and it marks the scene of another accident, one that occurred about a month ago. I read the news account of this more recent accident and I remember that a mother and her young child were injured. They have recovered, only to mourn the husband and father who was driving, but who died at the scene. The marker appeared after the funeral, salvaged from the graveside decorations, I imagine.

When I approached this new marker that memorializes the more recent accident and death, I drove slowly by the location of the old marker, and I noticed that another marker had replaced the one I visited last January. I don't know who placed this one, but I have since learned that my speculations about the previous marker were inaccurate. In the January 25th entry, I had speculated that for several reasons (most notably the care the marker received and its comparative permanence, affixed as it was to the guardrail) the marker had probably been placed and was maintained by the parents of the deceased. Then the marker disappeared.

I learned that the marker had been placed by the deceased's co-workers, many of whom pass the scene of the accident before they turn off the highway to approach their workplace, one of those telephone sweatshops that contracts with computer manufacturers to deal with inquiries from befuddled purchasers of their hardware. A mother and an infant died in the accident; an injured toddler survived. The woman's co-workers removed the memorial to present it to the toddler, who would now be five years old, I think.

Now someone has replaced the marker with one less permanent than the original, but (...but what?) one that touches me nonetheless. Things mortal, after all.

Reading: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, still. Forever maybe. As engaging as they are, the Harry Potter stories nevertheless induce sleep in me. I read in fits. Then I doze. Involuntarily, of course.