Solstice

The days won't get any longer than today, but hotter days are still ahead. Enjoy your summer!

Hotter Things To Do On A Hotter Day

Go to Pike's Nursery at 11am and spend an hour in their greenhouse picking out plants. (And I thought that Braves game was hot...) Take 'em home and spend a few hours at mid-day planting them in the sun.

Hot Things To Do On A Steamy Day

1. At noon, put on long pants and tuck them into your socks. Put on a heavy, long-sleeved shirt over your T-shirt. Put on thick leather gloves. Then go out into your yard, wade into huge bushes and tackle a bunch of vines and briers, ripping them out by the roots. While you are in the thick of it, find and remove a bunch of dead tree branches that fell during the spring storms.

I don't think I have ever sweated so much. It was literally pouring off my face.

Go in. Take a nice, cool shower. Then...

2. Go to an afternoon baseball game during the hottest part of the day. Braves vs. Red Sox at Turner field. It was fun hanging out with the girls, but even in the shade it was hotter than hell. It was too hot to eat. My beer got warm in record time. And the game was, I hate to say, kind of dull. Not a lot going on, and the Braves lost 1-0. We seem to be in some kind of funk. Only one thing to do...

Go home. Take a nice, cool shower. No more adventures today.

The Home Stretch

The test is looming in the very near future - Saturday morning, bright and early. The long, hot, miserable summer of study is almost over and I am spending the home stretch at home. I've taken a few days off work for last minute studying.

The plan is to study hard today and tomorrow, and then try to relax on Friday. So far, so good. I covered a lot of ground today and am taking practice tests tonight. It will be hard not to cross over into full on freakout mode by Friday, but I have all that herbal tea to help me. Ha ha. I'm looking forward to things getting back to normal. You know... when I can pound some drinks other than herbal tea.

Thirteen Days

...until I get my life back. The board exam is looming large - Saturday, August 23, 8:00 am (not usually my finest hour).

I've got cabin fever (in August - how sucky is that?), I'm stir crazy, I can't seem to function some days, and there are still nearly two weeks to go in this state. All I do is work, sleep, eat, and study. Well, and watch a little TV from 9-11 some nights. But damn, how boring and restrictive is that? Add to that a huge reduction in alcohol intake and you have a recipe for unhappy.

Aside from radiological physics, I've learned a few other things from this experience. Did you know that Tension Tamer tea can have some unfortunate gastric side effects if you drink 5-6 cups of it in one evening? Consider yourself warned. I suspect that it shares an ingredient or two with "dieters tea". Did you know that learning lots of stuff in one area can make you stupid in others? Well, some days I cannot put together a rational sentence, so there ya go. Did you know that if you stare at a book, your cats will be irresistably drawn to lay on it? OK, I already knew that, but they have confirmed it time and again. If you can learn physics from osmosis, my cats are pretty damned smart.

The only good thing about this weekend was the it was cool and dry enough for me to do my studying on the porch for a change. We turned the A/C off on Friday night and haven't had it on since. It would have been a great weekend for... ah, I won't go there. Lets just say the weather was gorgeous for late summer and I was grateful to be able to hang out on the porch for my miserable marathon study sessions.

Timely Delivery

The new porch furniture arrived on the first full day of summer. Seemed quite appropriate. Moxy kept a keen eye on the delivery process from her kitchen window perch.

We spent nearly the entire weekend out there in our outdoor bug-free (mostly) room. Studying still sucks, but it sucks a little less when I can do it on the porch with my cats. On comfy furniture.

How to Ruin Your Summer

How? Have a board exam scheduled for late August, the only time of year that the test is offered so you do not have a choice. I'll be taking the second test of three. I passed Part 1 - General and Clinical Physics in 2006. A few of you were around to remember this. This next test is a written (well, computerized) exam covering radiation therapy physics.

Have I mentioned that I hate studying? No? Well, I do. Suffice it to say that there are hundreds of things I'd rather be doing on summer days and nights. But the test is right around the corner and I am out of excuses, so it is time to buckle down.

If all goes well, I will get to take the third and final (oral) exam around this time next year.

Stardust is Magic

It was a beautiful late summer day yesterday, but we've had so many of those lately we decided to spend this one sitting in a dark movie theater. When you can't remember exactly what you saw last, you are way overdue for going to the movies again. I think maybe it was Spiderman 3, or possibly Waitress...

This time we were choosing between the latest Bourne movie or Stardust. I pushed for Stardust in spite of the negative reviews it garnered. I was in the mood for a good fantasy. It turned out to be an excellent choice. We both loved it! It was a good story, with lots of pretty visuals, adventure, magic, romance, and plenty of humor mixed in throughout. If you have been on the fence about seeing it (possibly put off by the lukewarm reviews* as we were), you can hop down on the "gonna go see it" side now.

*It currently has a 74% (fresh) rating on the Tomatometer, but it has a 90% user rating. Our newspaper gave it a "C". We give it an "A", and plan to buy the DVD when it comes out.

Forget Barry. Check Out Bobby!

After setting a new record for number of career ejections on Tuesday, Bobby Cox continues to ‘improve’ his record. He was tossed from a game for the 133rd time last night. He received a standing ovation from the crowd as he left the field, the fans chanting “Bob-by!”

His outstanding performance and continued determination will insure that his record will not soon be broken. As an added bonus, I am quite certain that no ‘performance enhancing substances’ were ever used by Cox in pursuit of his place in the record books.

Oh yeah… old what’s-his-face hit another homer. :rolleyes: His team still lost. Heh.

They tell me summer's over...

I don't believe it.

The picture shows the thermometer reading in my car on Saturday evening. Granted, my car was parked in the sun at the time. Once I hit the road it cooled down to a mere 101F.

Even though it is still summer on the calender, and we are in the dog days of August having the second heat wave in as many weeks, for most of the kids around here summer is over. They went back to school this week. It happens absurdly early these days. It wasn't like this when I was a kid, which doesn't seem like so long ago - at least not to me. I feel a little sorry for today's kids. School doesn't end until near the end of June and then they get hauled back in right smack in the middle of August. Do they care? Do they know what they're missing? Or is summer break just one long spell of playing video games broken up by occasional trips to soccer camp or whatnot?

Cicada song

I saw this cicada on my patio Tuesday morning. Judging from the empty shell nearby (see below), I would surmise that he had just molted and was drying himself out. After 41 years of hearing cicada noises during the heat of the summer, I had never seen one up close and in person until this week. Kinda cool, isn't it?

Cicadas make a loud, insistent sound that is unique in the insect world. For me, those cicada songs define summer in the south. They are a constant soundtrack on sultry summer days; almost deafening at times. I even heard them on hot days in New England, where the sound never failed to transport me back home to Georgia in my mind.

This is the shell he crawled out of: