It's 28* C in my office right now.

I don't have the energy to convert that to F, and having grown up in a country that said "Metric by 1985! *snnnkkkx! Hee! Hee!* Sorry, couldn't say that one with a straight face!", I have no real good sense for what that translates to, other than it's stinkin' hot in here. I don't have a hygrometer to tell me the humidity, but my hair and my lungs are telling me it's pretty sticky.

It's not quite sapped my will to live, but it's definitely sapping my will to work. One more hour of office hours and then I can bail and go home where it's cool.

The one saving grace is that the classrooms are fairly cool. It's supposed to hit, like, 96* (F, of course) this weekend here. I think I shall spend most of this weekend indoors, possibly working on my tension-zone paper (a project begun in grad school and just now resurrected because a journal is looking for papers on this topic). That is, if I can find some more background info other than good ol' J.T. Curtis and the one doctoral dissertation I (probably illegally) copied when I had it on interlibrary loan.

It's actually kind of surprising what a journal-database source on "tension zone" brings up. I'm looking for FLORISTIC tension zones, an ecology thing, but no one ever uses the "floristic" qualifier in their keywords. So I also get to wade through lots of papers on earthquake zones, and engineering papers (there was one about "cracking a scarf joint." If I weren't so enervated from the heat, I'd be really interested in knowing what a scarf joint was), and also papers on things like tension zones between different religious groups. And lots of papers with the phrase "Crack detection" in them, which makes me giggle like a 14 year old, thinking about low-rider jeans and THAT kind of crack detection....

I may have something else to work on this weekend, as well. Another textbook publisher e-mailed me and asked me to evaluate a couple of chapters, for $100 (plus a $10 bonus if I get it back to them by a totally reasonable and easily doable deadline). Cha-ching. I tend to regard this kind of money as "windfall," to be spent on whatever I please*. Earlier, I did a table of contents evaluation, which I'm waiting on a $30 check for. It's a nice way to carve out a little bit of extra spending money, and it's kind of fun to do. I can read the chapters in the evening, at home, where it's nice and cool, with some Bach on the stereo and a cup of iced chai at my elbow. And if I want to, I can knit more on the Verona shawl or some other simple project while I work.

(* you can probably guess what that will be.)

So it's good. It's good for me to have stuff to work on, besides knitting and quilting projects, because it keeps me from going all to loose ends and wandering around my house, feeling trapped because it's too darn hot to go outside, and any out-of-the-house stuff more interesting than the local Wal-Mart requires a 1/2 hour drive each way.

I don't like summer much. I think it's the heat and the humidity. When I was in grad school, I'd get almost like reverse SAD - I'd be depressed, sort of off my feed, borderline grumpy, at loose ends - all summer long. Part of it was the weather but also a big part was having the summer yawn open in front of me with the only thing for me to do being writing on my thesis or dissertation. I find a do a lot better with small deadlines and small projects that I can feel success from. (And I could never quite fool myself into "write three pages today and that's a success," mainly because I knew as soon as I showed them to my advisor, they'd be all taken apart and have to be redone. But that's another story for another time).

Actually, I've definitely noticed the "off my feed" thing since it's got so hot. Mostly what I can manage are salads and fruit; it seems like too much of an effort to do anything more. (In a little, sick way I'm hoping that continues; maybe I could drop a few pounds this summer if I don't feel like eating).