Mercury is rising still, turn the fan on high.

Admittedly, the room would probably not feel so sweltering if I wasn't drinking hot tea.

Local custom be damned: even if it is mid-July, you won't find me leaving out the milk, pouring in more sugar, and shortening the word "unsweetened" to "unsweet," as if it were a perfectly good adjective and antonym to sweet. (Which reminds me of that "UnCheese" I saw in the Whole Foods today. But that's another story.) I don't drink iced tea, you see. It's not the same as how I don't drink soda, but more an issue of both preference and convenience. Because in order to make iced tea, you have to first make hot tea. And hot tea is better, so why would anyone bother spending the time to make it colder, more dilute, and generally less pleasant?

Other than, perhaps, that the room becomes even more sweltering when you're drinking hot tea.

The reason that I am drinking tea at all is because I've got loads of stuff to get done still, and it's midnight and I should be sleeping soon, but I won't, because caffeine is indeed a most excellent molecule. I probably shouldn't even be taking the time to write in this blog, what with all the other projects I'm supposed to be working on, but I feel obliged to write something because I know I won't have a chance in the next few days.

Work is taking up more and more time (without resulting in more and more pay) as Anthony is trying to teach my coworker Nick & I as many new techniques as he can, so that we can do cell culture and tissue freezing and create and clone DNA constructs without his help. We've only started about half of the research ideas he's going to be working on in that lab, and there's already beginning to be more work than the three of us can handle. I get the feeling Anthony might be one of those brilliantly insane/insanely brilliant types, which has its good and bad points. But with lab work dragging on longer, I get home later, eat later, and then have to get to work on the dozen or so emails I've been sending & answering nightly regarding what we've now officially termed the Emory/NAQT Fall Classic (with thanks to Jake for his assitance in circular filing a number of interesting suggestions from Peter, my co-TD), our high school quizbowl tournament on September 28th. Tournament planning ends up taking at least two hours a night, and then I'm also supposed to be writing questions for the weekend tournaments that Clay and KC are coming down for the first weekend of August, which should be quite fun, but means that now I need to write 25 questions or so for that. Oh, and then for added exitement, I'm still editing this paper for Anthony. (Which, as you might guess, does not count as overtime.)

Anyhow, I complain, but things are going alright. Had a good time at home over the weekend, trying to fit all the friends and family into three days. It worked out rather nicely, in fact... spent most of the day Friday with the folks, went to dinner with them and my grandfather (P.F. Chang's lettuce wraps... ahhh....), then got shown tons of pictures of France until I was saved by the phone... Saturday saw the first full nerd brigade reunion in more than six months, so we picked up Svet, gave her some very belated Christmas presents ("Monster Women From Outer Space" lunchbox and Merry, Pippen, and Uruk-Hai action figures!), and drove down to Baltimore (in the Focus, what else?) to show everyone the fun stuff at Atomic Books, and then over to the Inner Harbor for some dinner, courtesy of Centennial High School's NHS sponsor's overspending on trivial matters like thank-you gift cards to Uno's. (Jen: "Laura, you need to arrange more of these speaking engagements.") Svieta had to leave soon after, and I have no idea when I'll get to see her again. It's really surreal at times to hear her talk of committment ceremonies and moving to France and having kids instead of the usual combination of random/perverse/Russian comments. But I'm glad to see her this happy. The rest of us then headed back to Tina's for a little destruction of public property, swimming, and the usual crashing-in-a-basement, this time to critique "The Last Crusade." ("Petra is so not near Alexandretta." "Dorks.") Then Sunday was for sleeping in and playing with the dog and the brother, as well as a whole bunch of file-swapping and some lifting of all my parents' leftover college books in the basement before flying back that night.

So that was a nice brief interlude, I guess. I get to go back in just three or four weeks anyway, for family reunion stuff and then a week of free time, before I have to come back here and figure out moving back into dorms and giving back the car (noooo....) and rearranging my schedule for work, school, and tournaments... oh, right.. tournaments. Time to get back to work.

(Somebody turn down the heat, my thoughts are boiling over.)



Editor's note: This may be the closest we ever get to a "normal" blog entry. We apologize for being so boring today.