Last time it was a light bulb problem. Not it's a bug problem.

It's June, so that means it's Junebug season. I remember these things from my childhood in Wisconsin, but never saw them again until just the last couple of summers out here in the Valley. Now they're everywhere all over again. And I do mean everywhere.

I sat down here at my desk to find the biggest damn Junebug I'd ever seen, parked right there next to my mouse. Have you seen Starship Troopers? Remember that big bug that reared up out of the ground in the big massacre scene? Same bug.

I tossed him out the window (Don't crush them. Never crush them. They crunch...and squirt.) and when I went to sit back down there was another one in my chair, recovering from having been sat on when I sat down the first time. The damned things are EVERYwhere.

I remember a few summers ago at the old house, when the last thing I'd do before bed each night was spend half an hour hunting the stupid things throughout the house. If I didn't get rid of them all they'd keep me up all night by buzzing around the bedroom and bumping stupidly into the ceiling fan.

I hate Junebugs.

Wednesday -- June 30, 1999
Back To The Booth!

It's starting tonight, right now, even as we speak. All across this great land, or at least all across the kinda great southwest of this great land, people are preparing for a trek into the desert to visit The Booth tomorrow.

Steve is coming from the Great White North Of Here. Tim is coming from the Shadow of the Mouse. Andria is coming from the Big Apple. Her sister is coming from somewhere Colorado-ish. Godfrey is coming from somewhere where they know the way to Santa Fe. Reporters are coming from small desert dispatches, TV crews might be coming from the Bay Area. Anonymous others are coming from locations yet unknown to us. We're all going to be scuttling into the desert from all points of the compass, converging on the phone booth in the middle of nowhere.

Some will only be there for a short time -- Andria & Co., for example, are just stopping by for a few hours -- but others are planning to spend the night -- Godfrey and maybe Tim, for example. Me, I'm keeping my options open. I'm packing a sleeping bag and a jacket and telling Beth "When am I leaving? Oh, I dunno... I'll call you."

We're all thinking of The Booth tonight, I daresay. Feeling childish exhilaration over a trip to nowhere for nothing, nervous anticipation about going into the heart of the Mojave at the height of summer, a tinge of rebel without a cause-ness for doing what too many won't. Bags are being packed, lists checked off, vehicles checked and double-checked, cameras loaded.

Tomorrow morning Steve and I will repeat the process that sparked this mass exodus to the desert. We'll leave here at 7:30, talking more good talk and listening to more good music. We'll stop at the Barstow Denny's for breakfast, where Tim will meet us for a meal among the Magnesia-ites, then we'll mount our final attack on The Booth noonish.

Want to join us? Meet us at The Booth around noon tomorrow. Steve and I will be the guys who look like we've been there before. Or meet us at Denny's -- we'll be the young guys. Or join the caravan on I-15 North -- just follow the grey LandCruiser with "Back To The Booth!!!" emblazoned on the back window.

And if you can't make it, at least give us a call at 760/733-9969. We'll be the guys who had the stones to go.