Interesting People

it cooled down considerably out here (67º on tuesday which is positively frigid for july) and is now hot again. >.< sigh.

the summit at work is over (yesterday was the last day) and i have made notes for next year altho whether or not i remember that in eight months is a whole other thing. one of the japanese girls who was staying in the dorm apparently wasn't on the list and i got a panicked email about it which i didn't see until sunday, as i was off on friday and i don't work weekends. but i figured i should check my email JUST IN CASE because something always comes up at the very last minute and hey, something did! i found her on the list and emailed the guy in charge of the group and everything was fine because it usually is. lunch was reliably delivered early all three days - like, an hour early - but it was boxed lunches that didn't need to be refrigerated or heated up so that was fine. we had a poster session for which the posters were all printed too large which was probably our fault but not specifically my fault and, again, it was fine in the end. it's exhausting every year and people enjoy it every year and i'm not sorry it's over.

yesterday because the summit was a half day and everyone in the sponsoring group all worked really hard on it one of the guys on staff had us all over to his house for grilling and showing off his garden. (it's a nice garden and i'm not just saying that because it produces zucchini which is then turned into zucchini bread.) so i got to stuff my face (there were SO MANY BAGS OF POTATO CHIPS and i brought a large amount of three bean salad plus there were hotdogs and burgers and grilled zucchini and fruit and the one grad student brought rolled crepes which were delish) and hang with my coworkers and it was really nice and chill and a great way to end the summit. it also took me an hour and twenty minutes to get to the house from the ugly building where i work but only like thirty-five minutes to get home. traffic, man.

for the fourth my sister and i went to her friend e's house to eat and drink and schmooze and stay out of the heat (it was very hot and rain was forecast so we weren't in a hurry to sit outside in a field) and that was also fun. i brought the aforementioned three bean salad and friend e had ice cream cake for dessert. i do love a good ice cream cake. and her house has a/c. :D

i watched the boston pops and then the fireworks on tv when i got home and while fireworks are better in person the light show (with drones!) was just as cool on tv. they had a minuteman with a rifle and the bunker hill monument and the uss constitution and paul revere on his horse and the steeple of the old north church flickering with the two lanterns and a ship with crates being tossed over the side. it was very cool. jessica meir, one of the astronauts on the iss, has a boston connection so during i think the 1812 overture she joined the pops live from space. the giant screens on either side of the stage showed her floating in zero-g playing the piccolo with the rest of the musicians. how cool is that? right?

sunday i babysat tamalinn's house so she could get a new front door lock. i zoomed with the family unit and pet the dog and mostly it got me out of the house.

the us is out of the world cup and i'm not broken up about it altho i think we had a pretty good run, at least until balogun got a red card suspension and the orange shitgibbon intervened to get it overturned. yeesh. dude doesn't even know what a red card is. i mean i don't either but i'm not interfering with world cup rules. anyway we're out and i have no favorites so i just hope the last games are good ones.

apparently the england-mexico game was the most watched soccer game ever in the us. 44 million people tuned in. which, holy shit. today was the last boston game, france-morocco. france won.

speaking of the world cup, check out some of the world cup snacks you can get in us stadiums. oxtail egg rolls. caviar on hash browns. lobster rolls, natch. and i know it's old news that overseas world cup fans went nuts for american ranch dressing but i have to share that kraft announced plans to release a travel friendly ranch dressing set. by which i mean tsa compliant (3.4oz) packets of ranch. weird and adorable.

if that's not enough ranch for you then you can always get a ranch dressing squishable.

today i learned that one of my pi's is going on sabbatical for the next academic year in PARIS. not that i'm jealous or anything. but i do wonder if that means he won't need as many hours from me and if so how will i make up those hours. i assume his students will still be around and they'll occasionally need support (travel, assorted expenses, whatever) but is that going to be enough? one of my other pi's was on sabbatical this past year but he didn't go anywhere and never required a lot from me anyway.

the nuns are podcasting. specifically dominican nuns. for those of you who listen to podcasts and/or are interested in what the sisters have to say.

way back in the late 40s in idaho as towns and settlements expanded people ran into conflict with the local beavers. so the state decided to relocate the creatures. by dropping them out of planes. (the test subject was named geronimo.) parachuting into new territory was apparently less stressful for a beaver than being transported by car and then horse to its new home. the idaho fish and game commission even made a documentary about it so you too can watch parabeavers being dropped from a height (the whole process starts at 7:21).