More Rob Marciano

(because talking about the real Katrina crisis is too depressing)




I got this sequence from FishBowlNY of Rob losing his hat on Monday morning; this was when I first saw him and became... enamored. And here's what they said:

6:48: Back to CNN, and a good-looking man in a red windbreaker: Anderson? No, it's someone I don't recognize, but boy does he look like Ricky Martin: it's Rob Marciano reporting from a street in Biloxi: "We still have power in this area but we don't expect that to hold out too much longer" - less than a minute later, the power goes out as the wind gusts up and blows off his hat, revealing a finely-shaped skull. I'm sorry, this guy knocks Anderson clear off the map. He says they're 5 hours from landfall, and honestly he doesn't look happy, even if he does look good.

Hm, I don't see the Ricky Martin resemblance...

Speaking of gay...

Ruby Slippers Stolen!

Here's what a couple of other bloggers had to say...

"Hey...does anyone know if Liza's ex, David Gest, was anywhere near Grand Rapids this past weekend?"-- Mr. Nightlife

"Mr. Cruise, please step aside, we have a search warrant"-- Feh

How gay am I?

For the last three days I have had Donna Summer's old hit This Time I Know It's For Real stuck in my head.

Katrina Hottie Watch

Ok I know it's shallow of me, in the face of this disastrous storm, to talk about eye candy. But I've been following it on CNN this morning, and I must say that Rob Marciano is a total hottie.

And yes, it's a ratings stunt to stick these guys out in the middle of a hurricane, but still... watching his red windbreaker get plastered to his pecs as he staggers back and his hat blows off while he's holding up his little wind gauge. Yum.

Oh and Anderson Cooper is still looking great, but he's got storm competition now.

My blood boils...

...when I see this ad in the Metro. Of course, you know what the Center for Consumer Freedom is a front for? Read these excerpts from the 'about us' page:

The Center for Consumer Freedom is a nonprofit coalition of restaurants, food companies, and consumers working together to promote personal responsibility and protect consumer choices.

The growing cabal of "food cops," health care enforcers, militant activists, meddling bureaucrats, and violent radicals who think they know "what's best for you" are pushing against our basic freedoms. We're here to push back.

The Center for Consumer Freedom is supported by restaurants, food companies and more than 1,000 concerned individuals. From farm to fork, our friends and supporters include businesses, employees and consumers.

Many of the companies and individuals who support the Center financially have indicated that they want anonymity as contributors. They are reasonably apprehensive about privacy and safety in light of the violence some activist groups have adopted as a "game plan" to impose their views.

"Violence"? Who are they talking about? PETA? And a thousand individuals? Hah, that's insignificant. I want to know who is behind this. I'm guessing McDonald's, Burger King, KFC, Coca-cola, TGI Friday's...

I'm all for consumer freedom, but I'm also for consumer education. If these people had their way, I'm sure that McDonald's would be supplying lunches in schools and it would be Cokes all around.

And since the growing obesity problem is going to adversely impact our already incredibly expensive health-care system, I say that it is my business when kids are getting fatter.

Mood Chemistry

I was just discussing the unpleasant mood effects of a hypoglycemic crash with Joel, and made me think about (for the umpteenth time) how our body chemistry affects our mood, and even our mental state. One apparent factor is external: the level of ionization in the atmosphere. Ever have one of those days when you go into work and you feel like all you need is one little thing to set you off? You feel very irritable and pissy for no apparent reason? Then you ask your co-workers and discover that several other people feel exactly the same way? I had heard once years ago that it was 'negative ions.' However, if you Google, for instance, negative ionization, mood you get articles and pages of stuff that seem to indicate all sorts of mood effects. Hmm, warrants further research?

I'm not as big of a Star Trek geek as I thought...

Holy Crap

Check out the dust devils on Mars!

Bunnies

Along my commute to work, right about at the 'peaceful and serene' area, the last few weeks I have seen a cute little brown rabbit in the grass nibbling away. I almost never see rabbits around here (just tons of squirrels) so it was an extra treat to see him/her on my walk to work or home, and if I didn't see the bunny for a couple days I would worry that some evil cat had gotten him.

But lo and behold, as I walked the path in the predawn darkness to teach my spin class this morning, there were not one, but two bunnies! One was about fifty feet down from the first one. I wonder if they are siblings? Both look pretty small to me, like they are not full-grown.

5 a.m.

As I was just saying to Enviroboi, I really should try to get up at 5 a.m. every morning, instead of just Thursday mornings to get to class. There are two excellent reasons:

1. Since I only do it once a week now, I never sleep well the night before. I wake up every half hour for 3 hours before I'm supposed to get up, worried that I will oversleep (despite my alarm) and miss class. If I get up every day at 5 maybe I'll get used to it.

2. I have always been a morning person. I do my best writing in the morning, I feel inspired and creative then. By evening I'm mentally tired. So maybe I'd get more writing done.

Now, the question is whether I have the willpower to follow through.

Hotel Breakfasts

Every Thursday morning I walk from home to the Georgetown Washington Sports to teach my 6:30 spin class, then I walk along M Street from Georgetown 15 blocks east to work. Along that route I pass through an area known as West End, which features several swank hotels, two of which have restaurants facing the sidewalk. I always get a little kick out of looking in to see all the business people in there having their breakfasts; it's fun to see who eats what, their body language as they interact, who seems relaxed, who is nervous and kissing up. One restaurant is in the Park Hyatt, which, when I walked by a couple weeks ago, was abruptly closed, and the furniture being liqudated. According to the web site though, they are doing a big renovation.

The other hotel, the Ritz-Carlton, also has a kitchen with big windows, and I like to see the cooks in there milling around. Well today the kitchen was deserted, and the restaurant drapes were all closed. What's up? Not enough business? It all seemed kind of depressing.

Maybe partly because watching these travellers having their hotel restaurant breakfasts took me back to the good old days of ICE, when we could go to GenCon in Milwaukee every year, and almost every time we would stay at the grand old Marc Plaza Hotel (now it's the Hilton Milwaukee City Center). And of course we would have breakfast every morning in the hotel. I would have fresh squeezed OJ. Going to the convention always seemed like such a treat, even though we spent most of the day manning a both at the show hawking games or doing demonstrations. But at night we would hang out with the other game company people, like the very hot Weick brothers from White Wolf, or Fred Malmberg from Target in Stockholm, other other fun people. Working at ICE was often stressful and even enough to give me a nervous breakdown, but it sure could be fun sometimes.

Oh and just yesterday at home while rooting around in my toolbox for a drill bit, I came upon a matchbook from, of course, the Marc Plaza Hotel.

This takes me back...

I remember when I was a kid and we visited England, one stop was Stonehenge. Back then you could walk around and even climb on the stones -- horrors! At least at this site you still can. I'd really like to go back, do a castle tour and visit those cathedrals that all looked the same to me back when I was 12. After an architecture education I think I'd be able to better appreciate them.

Oops

Some little jilted missy in the yearbook staff got a little overzealous.

I have to admit that, since I do work at a printer and sometimes am asked to deal with materials that I find objectionable, I have had the temptation to overlay the faintest screened type over, for instance, a picture of Dick Cheney, that said maybe... SATAN.

But jeeze, I would make sure that it was so subtle that it would only be subliminal!

Must... motivate... self...

Last night I subbed a spin class at the 1211 club. As usual at that club they loved me! Feel the love? It gives me a warm feeling when they applaud, then they troop past me and thank me and tell me what a great class it was and what great music I play for them. *SIGH*

I think my regular students are getting complacent.

I got home around 7:45 and foolishly turned on the TV, where I got stuck watching an absurd episode of "Monster House" alternating with the delightfully cheesy James Bond flick Moonraker. By 9:30 I was pooped. Must remember to set the big stupid DVR in the living room to record the HBO Rome series. I wish I could have the smart TiVo in the bedroom take control of the big stupid DVR in the living room and tell it what to do. Which reminds me, on NPR's Morning Edition yesterday they interviewed the two supposed founders of the internet. At the end the interviewer asked them about the future of the net and one talked about smart appliances and how you could use the internet to control other devices remotely. We have that now! I don't, unfortunately, because I have an older TiVo, but with the newer model you can connect to it through the internet and program it remotely.

The original purpose of this post was to say that I really need to motivate myself to finish up the latest chapter of the Shadowstone Chronicles, and to get the 2nd Edition of Tanara wrapped up soon.

I knew it

When the original (1953) WotW DVD went out of print right befre the new movie was released, and the old DVD's shot up to over $100 on Ebay, something was up. And here we have it: The War of the Worlds - Special Collector's Edition (1953)

Space: Above and Beyond - We have cover art!

Wowie!

Weather

It's supposed to cool down some this week, but still in the mid-80's. Argh. I am so looking forward to cooler weather, even though I always get (more) depressed in the fall. Of course, in DC we get all of 2 weeks of 'fall' (i.e., temps in the 70's and 60's, breezy and crisp, drier air) before it drops to the nasty wet 40's for the 'winter.'

Monday

Good morning, Gentle Readers, and welcome to another Monday at the Synaptic Discharge.

I sense that serotonin levels are low, as my mood today is less than stellar. Had an unusually active weekend again, and maybe that has something to do with the mood.

Recap:

Friday nite, had to stay a little late because boss-man Peter took in a crappy copy job and guilted me into working on it. Ugh, copying. It's so... manual labor. Was tired so turned in early.

Saturday: up early, then to spin class. I felt kind of out of it, so took a couple of breaks. I don't know why I was winded, I certainly had enough sleep. Got home and did a few things around the house then off to C.'s place for an overnight stay (I had Carlos sub my Sunday Morning class). We watched the The Wedding Banquet, which is one of my favorite movies. (Winston Chao is sooo cute.) I only got choked up a little when Wei and Simon fought. And at the end when the parents leave I always get teary-eyed.

We went to dinner at a cute little place that had sushi and chinese food. My sezchuan beef was yummy, and C. had a monster plate of sushi. Then back to his place to watch Stargate. I hadn't watched it in awhile, and despite the scantily-clad actors, it struck me more than ever how bad the plot holes were regarding the whole deciphering-symbols thing. The TV series really cleaned up some of that mess and made more sense.

After the movie we went to bed. ;-)

Sunday:Woke up early, got up a little later, then went to Silver Diner for a huge breakfast. Left C.'s around noon, got home in time to change then headed off to the library for my 3 hours of high-speed shelving. Fun! Last night I made popcorn and watched most of the Stargate SG-1 pilot.

But today I just feel blah. I'm not sure where things are going with C.; he's very sweet and nice, but I just don't know what I feel. And I guess I'm also a little jealous of my time alone. (And dating sure is expensive! I like to eat out, but it just seems like a lot of money.) Next weekend I teach Sunday morning, so no outings. And the next weekend is Labor Day, C. is going out of town. We'll see what develops.

Peas in a Pod

As usual my sis and I are on the same wavelength!

Did I ever mention that when we were kids we used to play Barbies® together? Hm, am I gay much?

Last Night

I dreamed that I was buying new bike shoes. In some kind of department store. And the (gay) boyfriend of one of the other spin teachers was there working as a sales clerk. And he was nude. How's that for weird?

A year ago...

...or so, I posted this. Jeez that class sounds annoying. I barely remember it, certainly not that she played a N.E.R.D. song (probably She Likes to Move, which I was nervous about putting in a spin mix because it had some kind-of racy lyrics)

Blah

Just feeling blah today. Morning class went ok, but I can't wait for the day to be done, and me to be home after evening class with some nice sushi from Whole foods and maybe a glass of vino.

Had a bit of a blow-up yetsterday when the IT director tried to do an end-run around me and get some stupid little job done in a big rush. First he went to my assistant without talking to me first, then tried to print out some stuff on the monster printer without so much as talking to me. No one but production people are supposed to go near that machine, and every time he does it he fucks it up anyway. He can't seem to set up the printing parameters right. Some IT director.

Anyway, then he put a mounting job in with an hour turnaround (normal turn is 24 hours) with incomplete information, again without asking me, or K. the asst manager or J. the shop manager. Then he is asking the mounting guy why his stuff isn't done.

The reason he is supposed to ask me is that my staff actually have real work for real clients they are working on and can't just drop everything to rush some little job for him -- which is a rush only because he can't seem to plan his way out of a wet paper bag.

So right n front of me, he asks K. why his job isn't done. I say to her, without even looking at him. "I don't know, for some reason I wasn't in the loop on this job. I have D. the mounting guy doing the very important job for (actual important real client)." Then I walk away.

So we bitch to Production Director P. who says he'll instruct IT Napoleon that he has to submit a job like a real client, and that when he asks for a ridiculous turnaround, we'll call him like a real client and tell him it's not going to happen.

I like it when I get my way (which of course is in fact the right way) and P. delivers a smackdown, but it would be easier if IT Napoleon would just follow the rules and not try to act like he's somehow special.

But I digress. Maybe I'll talk more about my blah feelings in a bit. Need more coffee and to get a print job out...

Oops

Apple, Microsoft Duel Over iPod Patent

No Seven-day checkout?

Swedish library lends out humans

A homosexual, an Imam, a Muslim woman, a gypsy and a journalist will be among nine people available for members of the public to borrow this weekend. Easy to locate within the Dewey Decimal System, lenders will borrow the human items for a 45 minute chat in the library’s outdoor cafe.

The X-Files Mythology: Black Oil

Oooh. I have held off on buying X-Files DVDs for several reasons, but now some of the best eps (I say this in part because many feature the delicious Nick Lea as Alex Krycek) are gathered in this theme collection:
The X-Files Mythology, Vol. 2 - Black Oil

Street Parade 2005

I HAD a link to the 2005 Zurich Street Parade, which my old friend Andreas might be attending. But since it seemed to attract several 'junk' posts, I've pulled it. If anyone wants to see it, I'll send it to you. :-P

Hello Darkness My Old Friend

(always loved those lyrics)

Anyway, I was thinking of this because it was wonderfully dark and gloomy this morning, after too many days of blazing sun and heat and haze. Unfortunately, it was deceptive: when I stepped outside it was still too warm and humid, and I was sweating by the time I got to work. Bleah.

Weekend Recap

Saturday:
Class
Went well. I taught 'off the bike' and they seemed to really like it. I can be more of a 'coach' that way, since I can talk more, walk around, make some eye contact. Had 12 people, pretty good for summer.

Company Picnic
At Six Flags in MD. I drove Pixie and his girlfriend and we got there right on time, though they suck as navigators. It was hot as freakin hell, (95°) and not even a breeze in the pavilion. There was the usual awkwardness of seeing co-workers out of context. Too many middle-aged men in shorts with chicken legs. I'm sure I was unenthusiastic, and didn't want to ride any rides. We finally all did the most tame one: you sit in an inner tube and ride around a fake river.

I have to say something about the attendees at Six Flags in general. OMG, I have not seen so much white trash in my life! Too many examples of mutation to count; enough to believe in de-evolution and the dangers of inbreeding. Ironically of course, these are the kind of people who would believe in 'intelligent design,' they being very people who 'shine' as examples that there was no intelligence behind their chromosomes.

Sunday:
Class
Ten people, also went well, though I biked for most of class.

Volunteering @ the Library

They LOVED me! Everyone was so nice. The guy I was supposed to report to was this little Asian guy Ahntu who was apparently in charge. The computers were down and they were all freaking out so I kind of stepped back, since I got there 15 mins after opening at 1 pm, but he was still nice even though he was obviously very harried. Apparently the system had even been down Sat but no one had bothered to warn them. One nice woman took me back and managed to find a volunteer login book and give me a little orientation and set me to checking returned DVDs to make sure they were in the cases. She shook her head and said "Sometimes I think we are running a video store and not a library!"

Then Ahntu came back and grabbed me and pointed me to a cart and said, "Here you go, you can shelve, ok?" But it was shelving stuff that was off the return bin (which was getting refilled every 15 minutes or so) into the pre-shelving area, where they do a basic sort. Maybe they don't trust the volunteers to actually shelve real books on real shelves in the actual library. Well about an hour in one lady came up to me and said, "Wow, you are really fast! You are going to give the speed demon Ahntu a run!" So I did the diplomatic laugh and said I hoped I was as accurate as I was fast. But I caught a couple of misfiles, even as I was re-learning Dewey Decimal System (they use Library of Congress catalogue system at U.Va. where I worked before). Damn they had literally 2 dozen carts backed up for filing in the actual stacks.. They make the shelvers sign off on their work; guess they have some quality control issues.

I did 3 hours, maybe 8-10 carts, and they were all very sweet and thankful, saying I was a wonderful help (gee, wouldn't a little appreciation like this be nice at my actual job). It was crazy though, there was a line of 5-10 at the checkout the whole time I was there.

Monday:
Took the day off, did absolutely nothing. Seriously, I vegged all day. I had several things I wanted to get done and did none of them. Then I went to bed around ten and couldn't sleep, ended up dozing all night while half listening to the BBC news (which gets real repetitive after awhile, trust me.)

Another Reason to Volunteer at the Library

I hadn't even thought about this, but it's an added bonus: Lifestyle May Be Key to Slowing Brain's Aging (from the Washington Post, signup required) here's a clip:

"In Baltimore, Johns Hopkins aging experts are studying whether volunteering as tutors and librarians helps. All report promising, though preliminary, findings.

'It was pretty amazing,' said Michelle Carlson of Hopkins, whose team found that elderly volunteers scored much better on problem-solving tests and that their frontal lobes seem to have been reinvigorated. 'We observed changes that appeared to show that their brains were functioning more like younger adults'.'"

My first volunteer shift is this afternoon. So, listening to classical music on my iPod while shelving books should supercharge my brain, right? Right?

Losing my brain capacity scares me; I'd hate to lose my faculties. Of course, losing my sight or hearing is pretty scary too. I've been horribly nearsighted since I was around 10 years old (and my mother made me wear those uber-nerdy black plastic glasses), but now the farsightedness is starting. My eye doctor warned me that I was getting to that age. It's getting tough to read the tiny print on labels on aspirin bottles.

Bifocal contacts? One for far and one for near? (don't think I can handle that). Looks like contacts for far sight, plus reading glasses...

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Update

The newest and by far most powerful Mars orbiter appears to be doing fine, having passed the first big hurdle: launch and deployment. Now it begins the long journey to the Red Planet. The trip will take 7 months, followed by 6 months of aerobraking (anyone see the movie 2010, with Roy Scheider? It's like that but not so dramatic) before it enters its final orbit. Here is a link to the NASA/JPL update page. I think I'll add it to my list.

Flattery

Last night after spin class, one of the women in class asked me "Do you race competitively?"

I think my jaw hit the rubberized floor. "Hah-hah, no, I just bike for fun, and teach a few classes."

I'll just take it as a compliment and go. I'm certainly no Doug-doug.

Mars Probe on the way!

I watched the launch on NASA TV this morning.

One cool thing is that they have 'live' animation that begins after the rocket is out of visual range. Using telemetry from the probe itself, the animation shows the status of the vehicle, including little adjustment burns. Quite excellent. How long have they had that?

Cell Phone Bells Not Happy Sound for Many

That would include me and Miss Manners

No more HALO for you, young man!

Who says that playing video games too much isn't harmful?

Reminds me of a book by Ben Bova I read as a teen called The Duelling Machine

Movie Theme spin

A few weeks ago, Erika, the Washington Sports Group Excercise Manager Du Jour (turnover at WSC in management makes the spin of a revolving door seem glacial; think gyroscope) sent out an email saying that they were doing some sort of cross-promotion with Blockbuster video, and would anyone be interested in doing an excercise class using movie theme music? Well, coincidentally, I had already been pulling together some stuff that I thought would be fun, including ET and Jurassic Park. This is what I came up with: (I orginally was going to alternate orchestral with pop, but that seemed too jarring).

Flying Theme/ET
Leaving Drydock/Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Journey to the Island/Jurassic Park
Bridge of Khazad Dum/Lord of the Rings
Duel of the Fates/Phantom Menace
Imperial March/Star Wars
Mortal Kombat/Mortal Kombat
The Living Daylights (a-ha)
Lost in Space (tv theme remix off the movie DVD--with cheesy Matt LeBlanc voice-overs)
View to a Kill/Duran Duran
May it Be/Lord of the Rings

Well, when I announced that we were doing movie themes to my (favorite) Saturday class, the normally nice woman who comes every week curled her lip and said "movie themes!"

Sheesh. I said "It'll be fun! And if you hate it, we'll go back to the usual pop and dance remixes next week."

I think they hated it. So much for all my hard work. I'm supposed to do it again Thursday, but I'm digging up some songs from movies so I can do it all pop next time.

More Mars News

Due to launch tomorrow (after a day delay), the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is designed the scan the surface of Mars with far better cameras than before, and has a radar imager to look for subsurface water. Cool!

'Discovery is home'

Whew.

I stayed home a few extra minutes to watch the landing. I have to admit I got a little teary and choked up when Discovery came safely to a stop.

Democratic Underground

Thank you, Enviroboi! This site: Democratic Underground is just delightful!

Not Enough

But a good start: State bans cell phone driving teens

Ryan Phillipe:

Still gorgeous!

Library Update

(BTW, thanks for the comments, kids, and yes Rebel Prince I do remember Discmen, and in fact I had one of the very first -tape- Walkmen back in the early 80's -- actually mine was a Panasonic I think.)

Anyway, the lady just called back and said that the head Librarian at the central library would "LOVE" to have me come in and shelve any time I wanted (guess they got the picture that I wasn't keen on that greeter job), though she also said that if at any point I might like to consider the CyberCenter job at the Columbia Pike Branch that they would be thrilled too. Ew, helping computer-ignorant people use Microsoft Office on PC's? Talk about hell on earth for T. Kevin! Shelving here I come!

Hmm, Maybe I'll be needing a new iPod for this... the battery on my poor first generation Pod is just about kaput, though I have to say it's done better than a lot of other iPod batteries.

I'm Tired

I know you're not supposed to say that in the gay world (you're supposed to say 'I'm sleepy', hah hah), but what the hell. I subbed an hour spin class last night at 7:30, then did my usual 6:30 one, this morning, and then my 6:30 one tonight. Then I can rest a bit. I'm already looking forward to stopping by WHole Foods on the way home for sushi...

The last couple weeks have just been too full of drama at work, even though a lot of it doesn't affect me that much directly. Last week were the layoffs, and two people quitting (one the top dog in DC, and the other a salesperson). This week two other people -- including the hot Marine Redhead -- gave notice.

And just little things like going to that Library interview, and realizing that I gained back the five pounds I had finally lost eariler this year. Argh.

This weekend I am going out to McLean to visit C. my Korean 'friend' for relaxing by the pool and an overnight stay (hmm). I know it will be fun but there is always that part of me that just wants to stay home and veg out alone. But I do enough of that already.

I have two weeks of leave left this year, and I don't know what I'm going to do with it. That Iron Crown cruise is still supposedly on, but we'll see what happens.

Apple - Mighty Mouse

Ooooooh!

Harry Potter Quiz

You scored as Severus Snape. Well you're a tricky one aren't you? Nobody quite has you figured out and you'd probably prefer it stayed that way. That said you are a formidable force by anyone's reckoning, but there is certainly more to you than a frosty exterior and a bitter temper. Severus Snape 80% Remus Lupin 80% Albus Dumbledore 70% Hermione Granger 60% Ginny Weasley 55% Harry Potter 55% Sirius Black 50% Lord Voldemort 45% Ron Weasley 40% Draco Malfoy 30% Your Harry Potter Alter Ego Is...? created with QuizFarm.com

The Library

So last evening I went to the Arlington Library for my little interview to be a volunteer. It went well, maybe a little too well. There are a bunch of positions open, and I suggested maybe the Cybercenter or checking in new books or shelving. I like shelving, it's very relaxing and kind of Zen-like. The lady interviewing me asked me if I'd be interested in doing the Welcome Desk.

Yuck. 2 hours of being nice to people and answering stupid questions and helping them figure out how to use the online catalog? I have to be nice to people all day. I want to put on my iPod and push a cart around and shelve books and talk to no one.

She said "Well certainly you'd have no problem with shelving, and we desperately need good shelvers, but think about the Welcome position or helping out in the Cybercenter in the Columbia Pike Branch." (not convenient for me).

Jeeze they must be desperate if they want me to be their jack-of-all-trades friendly-face greeter and know-it-all (well I do know it all, but that's kind of beside the point).

The Truth is Out There

Oh sure, they SAY that it's the "Space Control Center (SCC)" where they track orbital debris, but I know better! It's REALLY the SGC, StarGate Command!

Space Above & Beyond on DVD

Yummm. let's say it together...

Rodney Rowland
Joel de la Fuente
Morgan Weisser

Oh, Jezus Christ!

Bush: Intelligent Design Should Be Taught

Not that I should be surprised, but I was still horrified to read this.

Sweat

Ugh, another week in the 90's. I miss the cool rainy summer of a couple years ago.

And I just love getting on the metro to discover that the AC in that car isn't working (and this was one of the 'new' cars too; they seem much less reliable than the good old Italian-made ones). If I wanted a sauna, I would go to my gym and go sit in a real one wearing a towel and near a shower to rinse off afterward, and not get my clothes soaking wet. Poor management and money wasting has turned a beautiful subway system into a breakdown-ridden mess.

Since I only go two stops and the distance between Foggy Bottom and Farragut West is short, it's not worth switching cars. But sweat was running down my face by the time the ride was over. Yuck.

At least it's nice and chilly here in the office.

Mars Rovers update

Can you believe it? The Mars Rovers are still going strong after more than 500 sols. Opportunity recently got another 'dust cleaning event' that improved its power input from its solar panels. Nice of those Martians to keep thm tidy.

Bored

It's the summer doldrums here at work, though I shouldn't complain, since some people got laid off. That wasn't pretty.

Had an uneventful weekend, taught classes both mornings and goofed off the rest of the time. I did straighten the place up and did some laundry. Chatted with V. and C. some online, did some reading. Tomorrow night I have my interview to volunteer at the library! Whee!