It's Tuesday morning

1. Increasingly what goes on in the outside world (I mean, the big bad things) seems kind of surreal and impossible to me. It's like our reality has somehow become a bad action movie, and the superhero hasn't shown up yet. It's getting to the point where I kind of become numb to these things - a few years ago, when a bad event happened, my inclination was to start knitting on something to donate to a charity. Now that even feels kind of useless. There's really no good one individual can do that cancels out or even balances the evil.

ETA: On Ravelry, someone posted Patton Oswalt's facebook response. And regardless of how you feel about the man otherwise, I liked this comment:

"But the vast majority [of humanity] stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We’d have eaten ourselves alive long ago."

Although I admit I disagree a bit with the "not inherently evil" part; I think the temptation to behave in selfish or hateful ways is awfully strong and it takes something - either faith, or love, or strength, or perhaps fear of retaliation in some people's case - to turn away from that and say, "No. I will not behave selfishly."

2. My air conditioner is acting up. I can't get it to run or cool consistently; it seems to be icing up. As soon as the maintenance place I use opens this morning, I'm going to call, hoping they can get a guy out today (this is my most open day of the week). I can deal for a while with no real AC (I got it running long enough last night to drop the temperature in my house to about 76), but not once it gets really hot. (Though looking at the weather forecast: Today and tomorrow are the last two hot days for a while. So if I can't get a guy out today, I could try for one Friday afternoon, and there'd really only be one more night when sleeping would be more of a challenge. Better to get it fixed now than when it hits 95 and won't go back down until October....)

(Sweet, I got an appointment for 1 pm - the best possible time - to get it fixed. Hopefully tonight, if it's still warm and sticky out, I can have a cool house. The little good things, that's what I cling to.)

3. I suspect my hive outbreak of the  past couple days is related to the weather change. My body does not like heat, humidity, or steeping in my own perspiration. (I took out a thermometer in the lab where I taught yesterday afternoon. It read 33 C, which, if my hand-calculated conversion was right, was about 91 F.) I may eventually have to consider a life-upheaval of moving to a cooler climate if this continues. I don't like that thought. (My ideal summer room temperature is 72, but I rarely get that. I don't even have that at home; it's too expensive to run the air conditioning that much). I'm still contemplating buying a small window unit for my bedroom and retreating in there when it gets so hot - it's probably cheaper to cool one room with a window unit than to try to cool the whole house, even with shutting off a couple rooms.

4. I've also lost my appetite. This is partly plus (my annual checkup is in just over a month), partly minus (it's harder to eat your five servings of vegetables when you don't want to eat.) It's probably tied to the weather change - seriously, we went from highs in the 50s to highs in the 80s without any transition time.

5. I didn't feel the earthquakes that hit Central Oklahoma last night - they were too small and I was too far away from the epicenter. (I did feel, a little bit, the 5.6 magnitude one that hit back in 2011. At first I thought it was construction equipment driving down the street but then I remembered it was late at night. Then I realized it was an earthquake and was a little freaked out.)

6. I crocheted a bit on the last leg of the DJ PON-3 but most of my evening was spent grading exams.