Eccentric Flower:201007/Aint Dead

Incredibly hot nasty week weatherwise.

The cat is very unhappy with me (he thinks I control the weather). Every night before I go to bed I go downstairs and check all the windows and doors, and if we have left the fan we keep in the living room on, I turn it off because I don't like to leave it on all night. The other night the cat followed me upstairs - not to holler to be allowed into one of the three air-conditioned rooms upstairs (whose doors are necessarily closed), but to say YOU GET BACK DOWNSTAIRS AND TURN ON THE AIR MACHINE RIGHT NOW. He very clearly was trying to lead me back down to mend the folly of my ways.

The last couple of days he has taken to hollering to be let into one of the air-conditioned rooms in the morning, which would be okay except he starts between four and five a.m.

Yesterday night I poured some cold water from the fridge container into his recirculating bowl, rather than (considerably warmer) cold water from the tap. He found the exact spot where my water had mingled with the rest of the water in the bowl and lapped at that for close to three solid minutes.

Been pretty productive at work, but as of today our offices are being torn up and I'll be working a lot at home for the rest of the month because there's no way I can get anything done in our temporary quarters. We'll see how that works out.

The Boston Phoenix printed their third annual listing of the fifty local bands you should know about, one per state (actually 51, they let DC in), and apparently this year there are audio clips available and I need to go listen to about half of them, but haven't had time or energy yet.

I built a screen door from scratch, because I had to (they don't make doors in the right size and cutting a premade door down to size, which is what I tried last time, turned out to be a bad idea); I hung a casement window from scratch (because all the frame wood had to be replaced or refitted, due to a combination of carpenter ants and a non-standard-sized window). Those two jobs exhausted all my handyman aptitude for the year, I believe. Still, both were reasonably competent, which cannot always be said of my home repairs.

I have been drinking a lot of beer and watching a lot (for me) of the futbol. I blame the weather.

Netherlands-Spain on Sunday. NYC the weekend after that. Beyond that, it may be a long slow slog through July. We shall see.