I survived another weekend. How 'bout you?

There are a zillion descendents of my great-grandfather H. running around the state. Who knew?

	7 AM (11) Jul 26	75.9 (24.4)	52.0 (11.1)	30.11 (1019)	E 8
	6 AM (10) Jul 26	75.0 (23.9)	53.1 (11.7)	30.08 (1018)	E 18
	5 AM (9) Jul 26	73.9 (23.3)	55.0 (12.8)	30.07 (1018)	E 25
	4 AM (8) Jul 26	80.1 (26.7)	52.0 (11.1)	30.07 (1018)	E 22
	3 AM (7) Jul 26	81.0 (27.2)	52.0 (11.1)	30.08 (1018)	NNE 13
	2 AM (6) Jul 26	82.9 (28.3)	50.0 (10.0)	30.06 (1017)	NNW 9
	1 AM (5) Jul 26	84.0 (28.9)	50.0 (10.0)	30.03 (1016)	ENE 24
	Midnight (4) Jul 26	87.1 (30.6)	46.9 (8.3)	30.01 (1016)	Calm
	11 PM (3) Jul 25	90.0 (32.2)	44.1 (6.7)	29.99 (1015)	S 3
	10 PM (2) Jul 25	91.0 (32.8)	43.0 (6.1)	29.97 (1014)	Calm
	9 PM (1) Jul 25	91.9 (33.3)	43.0 (6.1)	29.96 (1014)	Calm
	8 PM (0) Jul 25	91.9 (33.3)	43.0 (6.1)	29.97 (1014)	SSW 6
	7 PM (23) Jul 25	91.9 (33.3)	43.0 (6.1)	29.99 (1015)	Calm
	6 PM (22) Jul 25	91.9 (33.3)	45.0 (7.2)	30 (1015)	Variable 3
	5 PM (21) Jul 25	91.0 (32.8)	46.0 (7.8)	30.03 (1016)	Variable 3

Yes, this is the cliched "Holy Wheat Thins, Batman! It's hot!" post. But I thought I would go ahead and post some data pointing to how hot it was last night, so when I whine, I've got the numbers to back it up.

It's. Friggin'. Hot. And I'd like to go ahead and call shenanigans on my book learnin'. All that talk about how, after the sun drops below the horizon, the desert cools way, way down? SHE-NANI-GANS.

See? Data backs me up.

It's hot. It's my sun-fearing-ancestry-never-knew-this-kind-of-heat-was-possible-in-nature hot. It's flat-ferrets-fans-in-the-bedroom-underpants-in-the-freezer-swamp-cooler-on-at-three-a.m. -let's-just-go-ahead-and-sleep-on-ice-blocks-bring-me-ice-cream-and-isn't-there-someone-we-could burn-at-the-stake-for-this-heat? hot.

Hot.

Adam decided to reward me for all my virtue in revision by handing me a fistful of Splenda packets and the shiny new Entertainment Weekly subscription.

Awesome.

If you look very carefully at my eyes, you might see a very small cardbord sign propped up in one of my pupils which reads, "HELP! KIDNAPPED! TRAPPED! Kisses, SW."

I've been working ten hour days this weekend, completely wrapped up in an imaginary Albuquerque with imaginary people who are busy leading imaginary lives that I have to write down.

To Adam's dismay, it takes a upwards of a full hour to pull myself out of my head and back into the land of Functioning Adults. For the first fifteen minutes, I've still got story chatter in my head, for the next half an hour, I'm listening to what's being said and responding -- in my head. And for the last fifteen minutes, I can just about function, though it takes enormous concentration and my answers verge on zombiesque grunts, and then fifteen minutes after that, I'm fine.

Except by the time the hour's up, I have to sit back down and work more, and anyone who's been around me is completely fed up with the process and has gone off to do something else.

I will be so glad when this is over.

Another story in pictures, this time about a boy and the stuff he got in the mail.



Look what Adam got! Something from Comic Con!



What could have possibly come from Comic Con?



NEMESIS PRIME?!



Man! These were only released at Comic Con 48 hours ago! How awesome is that? Oh, boy!



"I need your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle."



"Uh, no."



"Nemesis for the win!"

"Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"



"I see nothing, I see nothing, I see nothing. Just keep revising."

It's quite possible I look forward to Thursdays more than any other day of the work week. I know it's bordering on blaspheme in our TGIF culture, but if you saw my Friday workload, it would make you wimper for Sweet Jesus to come and take you now, regardless of your normal religious persuasion.

Thursdays, though, Thursdays I crave. Work's not too crazy, I'm a day away from casual Friday which means I think about how much life would be better if I could wear jeans all the time, but best of all, it's Thursday Night Green Chile Cheeseburgers and Mythbusting Club.

It's a deceptively simple concept: bring home two green chile cheeseburgers. Watch two Mythbusters episodes the Tivo recorded the night before. Embrace inner geek. Repeat weekly.

I love it, because it's when the nerds come shining through, and I'm awfully fond of the nerds. Like last night's steam cannon? Adam's jaw swung off its hinge. "I can't believe they're going to try that. It's not gonna work. It's not gonna work! It's not gonna -- "

[Steam cannon pukes up tennis ball]

"DUDE!"

We tend to "dude!" in unison a lot on Thursdays. The back button gets pressed repeatedly and we bounce around and then one of us says, "But wait! They should have -- " because let's face it about our inner nerds: they have mile-wide pedantic streaks. Can't be nerdy without that. And then we go back to the episode for the inevitible pretty, pretty explosion that we watch at least a dozen times.

And there are cheeseburgers. With green chile. Did I mention that part?

It's something Adam and I have admitted to looking forward to every week. And a look ahead on the schedule shows in two weeks, they're going to take on Diet Coke and Mentos and I can't wait for the Warning: Science Content portion.

And the pretty, pretty explosions.

Bunny feels the same way.

This morning, I thought, "Well, if it doesn't rain by this afternoon, I'll wash the car when I get home from work, and then I'll write an entry complaining about the heat."



Works every time.

(You may have to click on the photo to get the full effect. Just sayin'.)

I do love Albuquerque's summer storms. One minute it's clear and sunny, the next minute the mountains have disappeared behind an angry black cloud and the parking lot's flooded. Tempremental. Hell, just getting from the office to my car was interesting. In the space between the entrance and the first row of cars, the rain switched from the gentle pitter-patter setting to firehose. By the time I got to Bucky, I was soaked. And I don't mean "oooooh, look at me, I'm a delicate spun sugar flower of girlie-ness and can't handle the damp" soaked. I mean, I was more of the "it doesn't matter that I left my windows rolled down for two hours, what's a little extra water at this point" soaked.

I was still squishing when I got home, which delighted Adam. I think he may have even dubbed me "soggy pants," but I was so busy trying to get upstairs and change into dry clothes, I might have heard wrong.

The storm moved from the east to west, which I am told is the pattern of a traditional Duke City monsoon system. About a half-hour after I got home, the rain caught up. Adam dragged me outside to admire it, but at that point I was done, thank you very much. I'm glad the rain's returned, I'm glad it broke the heat, but in my heart of hearts, I was ready to be dry.

He really did call me a soggy pants, then. I know, I'm no fun.

The rain stopped about a half-hour ago. It's hot upstairs, but not as hot as it has been the last several days. I have the fan on and the window open. From where I am, I can hear the sound of wet tires on wet pavement as cars go through the puddles in the nearby intersection. The whole house is asleep except for me, and here I am, wrapped up in a cotton blanket from Target, typing in the dark. I don't know why I'm up, really. There are some minor apprehensions and my mind won't stop looping a Jenny Lewis song, but nothing that should prevent me from crashing. I'm just up, talking about the rain.

This is for the ALOTT5MA crowd.





Oh, yeah. I use my car to compensate for my lack of cool.

So this morning on CNN, they played a snippet of the astronauts' wake-up call, with the anchor asking, "recognize that?" over the blaring horns.

Uh, no. Can't say that I do.

The anchor revealed it to be the Texas A&M battle hymn, which sounds far more magificent than "fight song," and NASA had picked it for the first ever Texas Aggie in Space, which sounds like a set-up for a joke more than anything, but it's early and I haven't had my coffee.

But it got me thinking about the distinct lack of love for UNM around these parts and how I wouldn't know the UNM fight song if it ran over my cat. Does UNM even have a fight song? (Actually, it does. Called, I think, "Hail New Mexico!" which, when I'm particularly drunk and twangy, would translate into "Hell, New Mexico!" which seems more appropriate.)

Still, for a girl who can still sing her high school fight song ten years later, it's kind of sad I don't really have any school pride for the ol' University.

God, I was a bad Lobo. Never attended a football game, never saw Kenny Thomas at the Pit. I worked for the Daily Lobo, but I am a big nerd and I was going to work for the paper no matter where I went to school, so that doesn't count. The University of New Mexico was a place where I went for my education, but it wasn't the end all, be all of my world for (cough) four years. These days, I don't get fuzzy feelings of nostalgia that have me reaching for my checkbook when I get a letter from the alumni association. It's more of a "straight into the trash and what's for dinner" reaction.

I am a bad alumni. There's no UNM plate for Bucky, no alumni sticker on the back window, no sweatshirts and tailgating in South Lot. No reading up about former classmates in the alumni mag, because well, who? Everyone was on the five-year-with-five-semesters-off-because-of-financial-difficulties plan. I can't even fathom giving them more money now I'm out.

Look, I promise if the basketball team ever makes it to the Final Four, I'll change my tune. Really. Promise. Swear.

Fight song?

So, how did you survive the six hour blackout last night?



Wait, I keep forgetting I live on the edge of the world and the rest of my Albuquerque readers like to refer to my neighborhood as "Phoenix East." When they're being kind. Which they're usually not.

Anyway, our neighborhood was hit with six hours of darkness, and by the time I got home, Adam was hot, miserable and cranky. We went out for dinner (though he nixed my idea of going to a movie), and then made a pass by Smiths for candles and ice.

We came home to an impromptu block party. Everyone was out, chatting and playing. The walking paths were jammed with families with strollers and dogs and small children on small bicycles. One of the guys down the street had a grill going, barbequing up the meat in his fridge, and women were holding sweating cans of Diet Coke and padding around in short-shorts and bare feet. But by the time we hustled in the ice and found the candlestick holders, the party had broken up and the street was deserted.

"That's kind of freaky," Adam said.

"Really freaky."

We went back inside and played Monopoly until the power came back on, a minute shy of ten. A cheer went up outside as the microwave beeped and the porch light flipped on. To celebrate, we ran the air conditioner until 3 a.m. Sinful.

The past two days were spent trying to weather a 101.2 degree fever, which is rather steep for little ol' 97.1 degree average me. My doctor sternly told me to stay home from work until it was gone. It's still in the 99 range, but fuck it. The last thing I need is to be out of work for a week wiff a fee-fer. Because, y'know my boss would totally buy that.

"Yeah, you're a big wuss. Get yer ass in here."

Those Venue pages aren't going to get themselves built on their own, that's all I'm saying.

The fever gave me wicked dreams, stress dreams amped up to $100 million blockbuster proportions, the sort where I would wake up and take a minute to realize I was in my bed, in Albuquerque, that I didn't have to retake algebra at my old high school at the same time as I was supposed to be at work. Naked. Because what's an anxiety dream if you're not naked?

And right now, I'm still convinced Juan Pablo Montoya's move to NASCAR was just a fever-induced hallucination. I'm not going to believe it until Bob Varsha starts gossiping about it on Sunday. When Bob says it is so, then I'll know.

Until then? Fever.

Adam repaid my kindness over the last two weeks by doting on me hand and foot, draping my feverish brow in wet dish cloths, feeding me pizza, keeping my sippy cup filled with water and making sure there were a string of seriously crappy movies in front of me. Seriously, this is what they were talking about "in sickness" in those vows.

Actually, thinking back, I'm not sure we covered the sickness/health and financial aspects when we got married. The rent-a-minister was more concerned with making us pledge our love to each other until the galaxies spun themselves out and the universe recompressed itself. I am not making this up. I've promised to love Adam until the next Big Bang, which opens itself up to a lot of mistress jokes, but maybe that was the point.

ANYWAY.

In other news, I'm so happy to report Adam brought my iPod back from the dead and we've redubbed it the zombiPod in honor of its renewal.

I can't tell you how glad I am to have the zombiPod back. I'd grown so used to, so dependent upon having all of my music at hand at all times. It was weird only hearing stuff in the car or on the days Adam lent me his iPod to fill the void. And while it was awesome to be entrusted with his iPod, it wasn't quite the same, y'know, given his Pearl Jam habit verses my U2 obsession. And, while listening to all of his music on shuffle, I made the unsettling discovery of two Creed songs, which made me ask if his having Creed was a deal-breaker this late in the game. Though I know he's equally disturbed by the miniscule amount of modern hip-hop I have on my iPod.

And now I've just realized I spent too much time working on this entry, when I meant to look over the pages I churned out while I was Thermometer Girl! and make sure I had written something of substance and not sixty pages of "2na0-b0w-a'rhnanthgrpqergnbn awnbtortrd."

My money's on the gibberish.

I'll take two Advil and talk to you in the morning.

So, my dad's in the process of celebrating a birthday this weekend. Adam and I thought it would be fun if we helped him blow something up. And because I am So Awesome, I managed to work the movie feature on my camera and edit the resulting clip into a sort of greeting card using iMovie.

Suddenly, I'm forgiving the computer for the whole J-key thing.

And I know what you're going to say. "Sarah, putting Mentos in Diet Coke is so last month. Why, didn't your publication run an article on it just this past Tuesday?"

Well, yeah, but you have to understand blowing shit up is a tradition of long standing with my dad. We made geysers in the sand box, volcanos in the sink. Mentos in the Diet Coke is just a natural progression of our complex and dynamic relationship.

Happy birthday, Pop. I hope it's a good one.

I think I've shown a lot of restraint over the last several days -- heck, the whole summer -- by not discussing rain. I mean, c'mon, this time of year, talking about the rain is the opening gambit for every conversation, e-mail, blog post, postcard and monologue for the desert-dwelling population. How 'bout that rain? or The arroyos are finally deadly, thank the good lord. Which triggers a memory of an English 102 course at UNM, a pissed-off TA and 18 freshmen trying to pass La Llorona off as an urban legend, but that's another story.

While I am thrilled about the moisture (and sweet merciful Jesus, thank you for the rain), can I go ahead and admit here that I'd just a touch ready for the return of the 7% humidity? Skin that doesn't need lotion is just unnatural, y'know what I mean? Also my hair's just a clump of unruliness. What's managed to pop out of my severe bun's come out all ringlet-y and I keep waiting for Adam to grab onto one of those whispies and boing it right off my head.

But again, my hair woes are so minor in comparison to what we're getting, it doesn't bother to register on the grand scale. Break out the champers and pull up a chair. The monsoon season is here, thank God.

The change in weather changes everything. Swamp coolers, like the one sitting on our roof, are no longer the efficent cooling waterhogs as they were a month ago. Refrigerated air, on the other hand, suddenly kicks up to eleven. My trusty black hoodie has taken up residence in Bucky's trunk, because every restaurant, movie theater and book store is suddenly Antartica in August. Rain becomes an afternoon occurance, with an encore (complete with light and sound show) after midnight. Cars caught out in the downpoor look car-wash fresh. Adam puts away the hose for six weeks and lets nature water our xeroscaped yard. The air smells like wet sage and sand. And lightning on the way home reminds me oh, yeah. Big wuss. And, um, do the support spars in the Miata's ragtop provide enough protection to form a faraday cage?

I'll get back to you on that last one.

Dan gives me a mixed CD made especially for cruising with the top down at sunset, and the third song is Crazy, and I don't even have to put the band name, because all y'all are like "welcome to two months ago," but I can't stop listening to to that song.

And keeping it on repeat is probably wise, because later on in the disc is the Allman Brothers' cover of Dueling Banjos, which, I've learned, nets very odd looks from the bike cops.

Infectious doesn't even begin to cover it; the chorus was the soundtrack to a dream last night. It's permeated my soul, and I'm not even reaching into the melodrama drawer here.

But knowing myself and my fickle tastes, by August, I will have moved onto a new musical crush. Maybe it'll be an even hotter, hipper song, or maybe it'll be thirty years old and one of my favorites. I don't know. I just know how I roll.

Two other thoughts, while I'm talking about music. The first being the death of the iPod battery. I'm like 17% devistated, but Adam thinks he can fix it, so life will go on. The second thought concerns U2, Pearl Jam and a rumored Honolulu concert in December. Or as Adam describes it: heaven.

I hope I'm good enough to go.

After I updated with that rather offensive story, I found out the kind folks at Duke City Fix gave me a link and my traffic trippled. Now that's timing.

Anyway, if you're coming here from there, hello! And if you're a returning reader, hey again. And if you're one of the F1 fanatics, I know. But it has to be said, the podiumgasam almost makes up for the parking incident. Almost.

Soooo. It's a holiday weekend, which means I have had the standing Holiday Weekend Conversation with my family. It goes: "Yes, I'm scheduled to work. No, I don't know if I'm going to get out early. Yes, I did get out early the last time. No, I can't just 'do that' again. Yes, this is a real job. No, I don't know about Christmas, yet."

We've been doing this every holiday for eight years. It's never going to end. Ever. Ever.

Look, if I ever come here and tell you Adam's dead and it did not involve:

A) A freak ferret accident
B) Taking two in the chest in traffic
C) Cancer or
D) Shooting a masked bandit with his own gun, then being smothered by the dead body

would you please immeadiately begin taking up a collection for my legal defense fund? Because somehow, I don't think the legal system will accept the "accidental manslaughter -- comedy" as a valid defense.

Actually, maybe you should start sending in your donations now.

Okay, so here's what happened. We were watching the Brazil/France quarterfinal game. It was late. We were caffeinated. Do you see where this was headed?

If you missed the game, please know Brazil was not playing in top form. It was as if each player had mentally checked out and gone on a shopping spree. Adam said as much during the first half. "They're not even trying," he said in that Disgusted Sports Guy voice he only uses late in the Formula One season. "They're nancying around the field imagining what they're going to buy when they win the cup. 'Oh, I'm going to buy a Rolls Royce, a Range Rover and a Renault.' 'Oh, yeah? I'm going to invent the first-ever bobble-finger bobblehead! My head will bobble! My fingers will bobble! I'll be a millionaire!'"

Well, how do I not get in on that action? So I said, in my deepest voice, "'Hey guys, with my money, I'm going to become a woman,'" which upon reflection, wasn't the most politically correct crack I've ever made, but it was enough to make Adam inhail his Mountain Dew.

"Seriously," he said after he finished wiping his nose and flipping me off. "Did you have to flavor my sinuses?"

I apologized and turned back to the game. But after another minute, I went back to the Transgendered Voice and said, "Do you like my soccer pumps? Nike made them special."

Which is where Adam nearly died. I hadn't realized he was trying to drink again, except this time, he'd already swallowed and proceeded to breathe in the Dew.

So for a wild moment, there's my husband, doubled over on the couch, clutching his mouth, face red, sides shaking, tears streaming down his face, one hand clamped over his mouth, the other extending the middle finger and I don't know what. He tried croaking help a couple of times and ended up spitting all over the sofa cushion. "Oh, God," he said when he had recovered. "Oh, holy jeeze. I almost died there. You suck."

And it's true, I do. I totally should have gone for the Easy Spirit punchline instead.

He's fine, of course, and you probably don't need to start saving up just yet, but forewarned is forearmed.

. . . maybe I should set up a PayPal link. Just to be safe.