The Days Grow Short

It's starting not to be stupidly hot around here. It's still hotter than I think reasonable, but the occasional breeze allows me to imagine fall weather's happening, an impression assisted by some trees who are at least in the proper spirit of things.

And by proper spirit I MEAN DYING! HUAH!

Last night I broke a three week alcohol fast with some wine and a little scotch. The wine was almost drinkable--I'd pumped the air out of the bottle I'd opened three weeks ago. I'd never tested the technique over so long a period and I was amazed to find it almost didn't taste like liquefied Nerds mixed with vinegar.

It seemed like a suitable reward for another brain breaking astronomy lab. My glacial pace with math problems was not expedited by being put in a group with three seventeen year old girls--they were so cute, and at least one of them looked at me with the assurance that I, the adult, would have of course the answers but of course I was precisely as clueless as the three of them. Our final data sheets bore the ghostly remains of answers erased time and again as one of us reasoned we'd done everything wrong and realised we'd needed to start all over.

I guess the three of them were still in high school and must have been the overachieving sort who get put into college classes. I guess they're unusual in that regard but, when I wasn't feeling like I was committing a felony just by being with them, it did make me feel a little better towards children seeing some almost children managing to stay on a difficult task for three hours and see it through.

I thought about the fact that the astronomy class I'd taken in order to qualify for this lab was a class I'd taken in 1999, when my lab partners were four years old. Probably that hit my quota of sober thoughts for the evening.

Twitter Sonnet #430

Rescues conceived in balloon tunics beat.
Popping vests vanish with no small alarm.
The orange eye sinks like cookies in a seat.
Nothing negotiates substance of harm.
Aggregate gallbladder ladders lead east.
A method duckling heart handles crises.
The dry, sealess shores sound kite rulers least.
Pasty grapes glued to prows prompt all Pisces.
Seventeen strings of dental floss bar crime.
Braided street corn closes the coifed high brow.
Nations neglect the rights of crowned goat slime.
Not all the mermaids can fit on the prow.
Dominance naively volunteers lunch.
Ancient Wonka grass dissolves with a crunch.