So I saw in the newspaper that Netflix was going to make a movie in a nearby town.   Then I saw that they were having an open casting call.  All you had to do was show up with a picture and their form for consideration.   It seemed like it might be an interesting thing to be an extra, so I thought “What the hell?”  The paper said that it started at 11:00, and when I got there at 10:30 this was the line.

The guy in the orange shirt was acting much as the cowboys did in recent cow parade, he was there to keep the herd in line.

There was an interesting cross section of people there:  people who wanted a glimpse of movie stars, people who thought they could be movie stars, and people who thought it would be a lark (like me!).   Some people, especially young women, were all dressed up, in makeup and high heels.   I will admit that I put on a clean shirt to come to this ;-).

I started talking to the two young men who were behind me in line.   One had come from Denver and was a film student.   He had been an extra in three movies, but he was rather excited about this one because “you get paid” although he was a bit fuzzy on where it was to be filmed (not Denver).   And of course none of us had read the book it is based on or knew anything about the plot.   (Old people falling in love in a small town).

This was the other guy, shown here putting on a mic for a TV interview.  The girl reporter went down the line looking for someone to interview and picked him for some unknown reason.   He had a professional head shot (photograph) and I expect that he will be cast for the softball scenes at least.   I had printed off a photo of myself standing in the same spot as Jack Nicholson in “Easy Rider”, a movie made well before this young man’s time.

When we got in the building we got a number (I was #500) and a photographer took another photo of us.   Then we got a briefing on how this might work if we were hired (as I said, they will pay for  us extras!).   As I looked over the paper I’m not sure if I actually want to do this (drive 50 miles away, be there at 6:00 am, and be on call for 14 hours), but it was an interesting way to spend an hour.

This post is not about a bunch of people killing each other for the dubious honor of ruling over a bunch of people worth killing.   It’s about one the more neglected seasons.   Some places have just four season, some have lesser known seasons like tough sledding, road construction, rainy and hot/rainy seasons,  bug season, etc.

In most places summer means hot weather and the sort of common hot weather activities, like picnics, baseball. etc.  But here in Colorado, summer often means fire season.   We had major fires right near this town 4 years ago, when the fire got to within 3 miles of my house and you could see it burning from the front window.  Three years ago the fires were on the northern edge of town, so it was not as terrifying to me.

I took no pictures at all of the giant billowing plumes of smoke because I did not want to remember it.   Smoke blotted out the sun and what sunlight filtered through the black smoke had a strange orange color.   It smelled horrible and bits of burned trees and houses floated through the air for miles.   But the fire doesn’t have to be right here to cause an effect.

This fire was about 100 miles away.   It had been cause by lightning rather than careless campers, arsonists or park rangers (like the Hayman fire).  The wind was blowing from the south and it filled up the valleys around the mountain.

In just a few moments it obscured the mountain.   Miss P and I were out to dinner, and by the time we left you couldn’t see the mountain at all.   But by the next day the wind had shifted and everything was fine.   Although the fire is still burning it is considered to be contained.

Summer is also a time of ice, and we can expect lots of hail.   One friend had golf ball sized hail at her house.   It smashed car windows and dented and destroyed everything in the storm’s path.   I didn’t get anything but rain from that storm, but I did get plenty of hail from the next storm.

We had been to the dog swimming pool, and were surprised by the white streets on the way home.  It looked like there had been a sudden blizzard.   We had about an inch of hail on the deck, so my little tomato plants were toast.

The good news of this storm was that the hail was tiny so it did not do much damage.   And since it is August the hail quickly melted.  So our seasons are: Spring (or  Blizzard) Summer (or Road Construction, Fire and Hail), Fall (chile roasting) and Winter.   It’s a great place to live.