coming back to life

93 degrees out;
mass was said, cleaners, starbucks were open, von's had diet cokes.
half the city is driving around with their treasured possessions filling up their cars; would be fun to do a random survey to see what people packed;
very difficult to get definitive up-to-date info; when i dropped stuff off at the fairgrounds one of the volunteers turned out to be a neighbor of mine and couldn't believe we had gone back yesterday. she thought we were still under mandatory evac.

a very telling lesson for me at the fish counter at von's:
to the gentleman standing a bit behind the counter, I said, "I'll have a pound and a quarter of salmon."
He stepped closer, slightly acknowledged me, so I thought he hadn't heard me the first time. I repeated my order. He said, "hello." Then I repeated my order one more time thinking he was hard of hearing. Then he kept repeating, "hello, hello, hello," always in a nice tone of voice. Finally it dawned on me how unthinkingly rude I had been not to say anything pleasant to him.
I could only wonder if that's his normal demeanor or if it was because of the fire. certainly made me stop and ponder. it really is easy and sometimes fun to talk with the people we so often take for granted. at the austin airport one of the tsa officers asked how my day was? I replied positively, but was so glad I asked about his. His response was, I'm choosing to make it a good day.