It's like World 2-Desert out there...

One benefit of the work they did on our furnace back when it broke over the winter is that it seems to have a helped fix the aircon as well. It always used to struggle to get below 26°C or so no matter what I set it to, but it's 31° outside right now and it's 24°C indoors now. Pleasantly cool. Which is good, considering it's supposed to get up to 33°C tomorrow and there's an excessive heat warning through Monday night.

Still wearing all black and long pants, though. Fashion matters.

Last night I went out to pinandstutter's birthday party at Burger Bar and later at an actual bar. The bar had one (1) kind of sake on the menu and it was nigorizake, but being hyperconcious of money, I didn't get anything (and I had already gotten a delicious milkshake, so I was pretty full). I spent a chunk of the night comparing notes with liszante about our respective times in Japan. They overlapped slightly, though I was in Hiroshima and she was in Hokkaidō, and we even both spent time in Tokyo in consecutive years (her in 2008, me in 2009), at the two temples mentioned in the famous poem by Bashō:

花の雲
鐘は上野のか
浅草か

A cloud of blossoms
The bells, are they in Ueno?
Or Asakusa?

She went to Asakusa and we went to Ueno. I thought I had an old blog post about it, but that was the year I worked at Suzugamine and working a full week plus Saturdays with a two-hour commute each way left me barely enough time to do anything. There was one teacher who lived in the apartments right next to the school and I was incredibly envious.

I've been trying to be less rigid about exercise lately. I used to make absolutely sure that I got 10,000 steps a day, no matter what. This works fine on weekdays when I can take the L to work and walk on my lunch break, but it's harder on weekends, especially if I want to get anything else done. Right now, I'm taking Saturdays off from trying to hit 10K and still exercising on Sundays. Maybe I'll leave Sundays by the wayside at some point too, I don't know. I still feel healthy enough.

Writing 10K repeatedly there got me curious about whether 10K Commotion is still online, and it is! I haven't played DDR in half a decade and now live on the second floor, but if I ever get a first-floor apartment or a house, I still have Stepmania and my PS2/USB adapter...

Maybe I should reread that webcomic, too. I'm kind of amazed it's still online--early 2000s is roughly 2000 years ago in internet years and so much from back then is gone.

Alright, out into the furnace and off to a party. Like Arrakis, G-d created Chicago summer to train the faithful.