Strange things have been happening.

Yesterday the whole office building had to evacuate to the parking lot because the fire alarms went off and we all stood around in the afternoon sun feeling giddy and full of that weird sort of excitement and promise that always accompanied fire drills in school. In the end, nothing was wrong and we filed back into the building past the smiling firefighters and the abashed building engineers who, it turns out, accidentally triggered the alarms.

While driving home last night, I drove around a police blockade that was surrounding an overturned and smashed SUV. This morning, I witnessed a man and his two kids almost get flattened by a maniacal right-turner. The rest of my commute was filled with thoughts of gruesome alternate endings to what I had seen. Then on Crenshaw, without explanation, there was a huge truck blocking three lanes of traffic.

My friend Jon would attribute this to Mercury in retrograde. The stars are telling us to lie low, regroup, gather our wits. It is August. We need it.

I don't believe in Mercury in retrograde or astrology in general. But I do believe in the August blues. It is nearing the end of the summer and if we were in elementary school we would be inutterably depressed by the impending end of our sunny, lazy days. As it is, we almost don't believe that another summer has passed us by, tossing only a handful of sunny, lazy days our way. We marvel at the way the seasons blur when spent in an air-conditioned building under fluorescent lights with the same twenty people day after day after day. Today feels like one year ago today, which feels like two years ago today, which feels like that long-ago November day when we started this job and, fuck, haven't we been laying low for way too long already?