Just because we use cheats doesn't mean we're not smart

Red and raving, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

God, it's been just as hot as the devil's heineyhole around these parts lately. And just about as stinky. When Baltimore gets hot, it gets swimmingly humid as well. Sweat does not evaporate from one's skin without the encouragement of a fan. But waving a fan back and forth is nauseatingly effortful.

Here are some of the things that happened during the heat wave.

xkcd saved my butt
My laptop quit on me. Wouldn't recognize me as a user, wouldn't even attempt to find our wi-fi. Without the laptop, I am stuck using our desktop computer in the hot hot dining room, so I freaked out. And it's Linux, which I don't know, and it didn't come with any documentation or a CD, so I ended up late one night downloading Ubuntu, burning a CD, then trying to reinstall on the laptop.

I had to type "blah blah blah --configure -a" at the command line, and the goddamn thing still wouldn't respect my authority. "You must have superuser privileges to run that command".

And that's when I remembered an xkcd cartoon that I had never understood.

So I typed "sudo blah blah blah --configure -a" and... it worked.

Mom's Casa de Stijl
I sheared the children. Did not a bad job, considering I'd never wielded clippers before. Had some tips from my friend Chris. Only a couple little bald spots, and the kids look much cooler.

I then dyed the children. Mostly it was an excuse to shove them into the shower a couple times in an afternoon. Zhou went green, and looks like a tree fairy, and Mao looks like the Human Torch.

Your 100 Degree Heat Index kung fu is no match for my Two Hours at the Multiplex Strategy!
I took my children and 3 others to see Forbidden Kingdom at the $3 theater. It's PG-13, I know, but I am ok with kung fu movies. There's violence, but it is highly stylized, artful violence, neither angry nor brutal. Plus, few if any guns. In many kung fu movies there are strong, competent women, and children, and older men.

That was fun as anything, watching that movie with 5 little kids. They were bouncing up and down in their seats cackling with delight. "Did you SEE that?" Mao kept gasping.


Then last night during dinner, a front rolled in and the temperature dropped ten degrees in as many minutes. Today the sky is high and blue, the air is clear, birds are singing, and girls play the Moldy Peaches on guitar in sun-dappled shade.