The Cloudburst Edition

3. The number of days Vacation Bible School for preschoolers through fifth graders is being held at the church we attend this week, today through Thursday. Should this unnerve me?


5. The number ("The Furious Five") who first express their offense that Po in the movie Kung Fu Panda is chosen to be the Dragon Warrior who will defend the Valley of Peace and defeat a fearsome oppressor. I first saw the movie with the kids Saturday after we got into a snit about what movie to watch. I don't like it when one of the kids sulks because we don't choose what they want to do, and I am a mite tired of having to compete with them for attention with those tablets. Heck, I'm expecting to hear of a human-computer marriage in the next decade or two at this rate! Please just remember that WE'RE here.


19. The next graduation party we'll be preparing for a member of our own family -- our nephew Brandon -- will be in this year of the 21st century, so it's 2019 three years from now. (Rendering 19 today just looks cooler to me.) This past Sunday we had Minot High School graduation for Brandon's older brother Mathew, T'anna one of Martha's coworkers at Burger King, and four hundred forty-seven other high school seniors, and afterwards at Mathew's house the family and I met up there for a party! Much food was had, much playing was done, and a small part of me anticipates hosting our own big graduation party for Sarah in eight years, and Jeffrey in nine! A small part so far.


20. The number of chapters out of thirty-six I've finished editing on my next novel "Victory", and my goal's to have this live by Jeffrey's ninth birthday in thirty-two days!




23. Martha says I shouldn't rush it, but on our way home from yesterday's Memorial Day gathering at Rosehill Memorial Park I was doing some mental calculation and figuring out when all the other kids in the immediate family, barring death, the Rapture, or being held back, would graduate. I mentioned Brandon above is on track to graduate in three years. In 2023, or seven years from now, our niece and goddaughter Josceline will be graduating, daughter Sarah in '24, son Jeffrey in '25, nephew (and Mathew and Brandon's younger brother) Trevor in '29, and great-niece Avery -- our niece Breanna's daughter who will be born in two months! -- in '34! Wow, will that not show my age ...


152. The day of this year today May 31st is, for many people already the "Monday" of the week despite it being Tuesday.


2076. More than fifty years before the United States' tri-centennial in the world of Brian K. Vaughan and Marcos Martin's graphic novel The Private Eye (ISBN 9781632155726), the cloud in cloud computing that keeps the Internet flowing above everyone's heads burst -- it inspired today's title, and everything that everybody ever stored or said online came raining down and privacy was ruined. So were a lot of people, evidently -- wearing a mask whenever you go outside in this future world is downright necessary. So a private investigator is hired to find out, in a world where the adversarial relationship between the press and law enforcement has enabled "The Fourth Estate" to become the law, why anyone would want to bring the Internet back.


A small part of me wants it to go and stay away, David