July 17th (excerpt from a letter to a friend)

So, today didn't begin all that well; I got up at nine, rather late for getting to work, but I called McGarry and he said it was fine to come in late, so I threw on some clothes and jumped on my bike. It was wonderful to be biking again, I missed it, even though it had just been a week. However, it was by no means the most wonderful ride ever, usually I started 3 hours earlier, when it's the moist cool early windless dawn, but by 0930 it was starting to get warm, the sun had burned away the cool protective mist, and the wind was rushing in from the ocean up the valley, purposefully to make my life hard. And my nose was clogged, so I couldn't breathe through it, and my mouth was dry, but none of that mattered, because I was back on my bike, a very happy place to be. :) I arrived at work just as they were finishing their morning break, so I hadn't missed much, but the instant I got there my technical expertise was pushed into action. I fixed one of my boss's (Brett) laptop's last week, with the whole virus thing, but now the other boss (Bill, the non-engineer one...who spent alot of time int he 70s and hasn't left it far behind) managed to jam a DVD into the drive on his laptop and get it stuck, and now the computer tried to recognize the drive when it booted up, but couldn't, so it wouldn't boot up either. Fun fun. I thought it would actually be a hard problem to solve, and was all ready to unscew it, take the drive out, mess with the bios settings, and stuff. However, it turned out all I needed was a paperclip to trip the manual release catch and pop the drive out. Yay for easy fixes! However, when Bill asked what was wrong (very happy to have it working again, since he just bought it last month) and I explained it to him, he said "that's all?", my IT training came in handy and I swiftly placated his almost injured ego by spouting some jargon about bios ram drivers and stuff i had to configure to fix it. He was much happier when he couldn't understand what had been wrong.

Then I ran into Brett, who asked how Alaska was, and when I mentioned the lack of a normal day/night cycle he told me about his friend in Hammerfest who watches to sun go around and around for a motnh without setting at all. He asked me in the course of conversation if I knew where Hammerfest was. Of course I did, it's at the northernmost tip of Norway. What I didn't mention is that I knew this from many hours spent play Command and Conquer Tiberian Sun, where GDI had a huge base in Hammerfest and one of the hardest NOD missions in the game was to infiltrate it from 3 hovertanks and 1 subterranean APC full on engineers. And this stupid stupid Firestorm defense wall they had was such a pain, and you had to sneak around the back of the base, and trigger avalanches to create ramps for the hovertanks, and watch out for the ice, because it might cave in if you were on it too long and all the engineers would drown...but I digress. Very fond memories of Tiberian Sun though. :)

Anyways, after that I went out into the field to rejoin my wonderful crew, with max Becher, Elijah White, Nathaniel McGarry, and Ulysses the Mexican. They actually hadn't gotten all that much done while I was gone, but it looks like we might still finish on time. Our morning discussion was incredibly TACish, Nels had quibbled with Elijah and McGarry about what equivocation was, starting from the premise the an alien from Mexico and an alien from Star Wars was an equovocation, while McGarry presisted that it wasn't. Although Nels left for the other panelizing table, this swiftly divirged into an indepth discussion of Aristotle's categories, supplemented by remarks from Elijah and Max about this differences between Aristotle equivocation, univocation, and denomination, as compared to St. Thomas' definition of equivocation, and naming things analogously.

So after that came lunch, and I just couldn't sleep, so I was kindof walking back and forth in the warehouse, trying not to look too dead, when Elijah came up to me and said, "Here, you need this," and handed me a mdeium sized peach. He told me it came from the Woods peach tree (he's housesitting for them while they're gone), and to someone who hadn't eaten anything but toast in the past 4 days, it was the most delicious thing ever. I've had good peaches, but I'm not sure if I've ever had any that were so perfect. One bite into it, and the skin just peeled off, and it seemed like it was bursting with juice and flavor and goodness, and just...oh my gosh it was the best thing I've tasted in a long long time. mmmmmmmmmmm
So incredibly good. Just...the inside wasn't mushy, not hard but just tender enough to melt in your mouth, and the falvor was perfect, full and delcious, but not overpowering or too sweet...and even the fuzy skin was good, not very fuzzy, and just soft and...I can't even describe how wonderfully delectable it was.
So in the afternoon, it was rather quiet, as we were pretty industrious. Elijah got stolen from another table, and they got more people, so there were three tables. But at the end of the day our one table had done 23 panels, whereas the other two combined had only gotten through 16. Pathetic lazy bums. We were quite pleased with ourselves.
The ride home was much nicer, since I had the wind at my back, and I raced Max Becher in his car about 3/4ths of the way home, before the hill to to the Ferriers killed my lead, and he zoomed off in his silly gaspowered contraption. Sadface. But I was on my precious bike again. Happyface! But then I noticed, someone had SAWN OFF THE TOP OF THE HANDLEBAR AXEL!!!! ANGRYFACE! >:-(
Well, it works fine for now, but I guess I'll have to find some palce to keep my bike inside, since locking it up obviously isn't enough, and maybe Mr Tolberg will be able to find me a part to cover it. He's probably even got something to weld it on.
I hope.

Then I got home and made...a rather interesting concoction, somewhat resembling a smoothie. I had a hard time coming up with what i wanted in this house, I couldn't find much fruit, or yogurt, or molasses, or cabbage (suggested by Elijah, I think it would actually work better than the Romaine lettuce, which wasn't bad), so I combined a couple oranges, a couple lemons, a dash of cream, a spoonful of ice cream, some leaves of romaine lettuce, half a sprite, half a container of concentrated orange juice, and lots of ice cubes, and some water, and the result actually tastes pretty good. it's a bit on the sour side, but I don't like smoothies to sweet anyways, I could do with a bit more wateriness, and a bit more fruit flavor, I would skip the cream and ice cream, and add some plums and grapefruit and just...more fruit.

After thatI started writing this, and about halfway through volunteered to drive to the store with George to pick up some stuff for the homemade pizza they're making tonight (Mr. and Mrs. Ferrier are gone on a fishing/camping trip). And while I was there I picked up more peaches and grapefruit and watermelon. Happyface. <3 watermelon.