δU = δQ – δW

August 14th, 2010

(Sprout like a sonovabitch! Above, one of my creepy daily green smoothies.)

The heat is oppressive. In some ways it’s worse than the cold because in our home we can always make ourselves warmer (down blankets, layers, body heat, heaters, fucking cats). But this? We’ve got the window blinds down like normal on hot days – but today it’s too hot to even open them (so it’s stuffy and dark, ugh). I rigged up a swamp cooler which made me feel wistful for my Engineering school days when I knew stuff in my brain (reader, I am not even kidding, I recently realized I have been feeling very Stupid lately) and that really did help.

Sure we could go to a restaurant (air-conditioned) – except we kind of can’t, having a pathetic little stack of bills for next week’s mini-vacation and it’s my mom’s birthday tomorrow and I’m still panicking over that. The vacation we are all very excited about, except me, because it’s mostly just even more cooking for more people, but I shall enjoy the fact everyone else is having such a good time, and I hope to sew some gifts while we’re there if I can finish up my current project.

We went to the Young Artists’ Show at Six Rivers Gallery. The substantial breeze while biking was hot enough it didn’t help much.

On Our Way To The Art Show

At the Gallery. Doesn’t Phoenix look like a flower?

Phoenix Flower, Waiting

Phoenix Flower, Waiting

Ralph played music for atmosphere.

(Small) Pedal, Feet Of Father & Son

Rock Star. In Dockers.

He’d done it as a volunteer effort but was, surprisingly, paid in cash. That’s very nice for our vacation stash!

Details of Nels’ and Phoenix’s work:

I love this series of Nels. You can see him as he begins to fall deep in thought:

Nels Moves Into A Deep Thought (1)

Nels Moves Into A Deep Thought (2)

Nels Moves Into A Deep Thought (3)

We got home and did what cooking we could – heating up roast chicken in coconut oil and serving it atop basmati rice, alongside simmering fresh peas from the farm and strawberries cut with a little cane sugar and topped with cream. I sewed a bit. Ralph and I were crawling from the heat. He gave himself slight heat stroke mowing the lawn. He went out to bring home gin and ice cream. I refreshed the swamp cooler setup. Slowly the heat backed off.

Hey and anecdotally, this spider we found on our kitchen sponge was so horrific it made me feel angry and sarcastic. Ralph said, “It needs a haircut.” It seriously had really shaggy pedipalps. Here’s my hand too, all casually giving you a sense of scale.

I Have No Words

And some kind of goddamned venom sacks!

Great. Venom Sacks.

Dear Nature: FUCK YOU. I am totally serious.

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