Heat Has Fried My Brain

so, my goal for the past few days has been to avoid the oven-on -wheels that is my car. yesterday actually wasn't bad. it rained on me three times, so the heat index was only around 100, instead of the 110 it was on monday. monday sucked. bright sun (which i usually like), the highest humidty possible without clouds, and zero rain all combined to create a sweltering heat that made my car unbearable until the AC had run full blast for about ten minutes. and i had to go out to the marsh in that crap (a trip i've already described in my last hockey player post).

compared to monday, yesterday was heaven. well, i spent most of the day working in anne's lab in the biology department, so of course i wasn't as hot. but it also rained three times, and there were plenty of trees to park under on campus. my car didn't feel at all like an oven yesterday. oh, and i got free ice cream. i have good timing. i picked a great day to go and work in anne's lab, and it just so happened that during my one free half hour (other than lunch) there was free ice cream in the conference room. the ice cream was part of a send-off for emily, a former bio dept grad student who now works at a college in virginia, who is returning to virginia this weekend after spending the summer with anne here in mobile. so, while i was enjoying a free frozen treat, i caught up with lindsey (my biometry buddy, for those who have been reading my blog long enough to remember her). that was the first time i'd seen her all summer, since we've both been busy with our respective field work. she's doing research on gopher toroises, romping in the woods, while (as you all know) i am working with seagrass and urchins in port st. joe. needless to say, our research doesn't really bring us together. anyway, that was fun. lindsey and i will once again be harassing mccreadie (our former biometry prof) in the fall during our freshwater ecology class, and we had to compare schedules to be sure we'd signed up for the same lab.

anyway, so it rained late yesterday afternoon, then the sun came out again, which made for something interesting while i was walking to my car from the bio dept yesterday. when i stepped out of the life sciences building, i felt like i'd walked into a sauna. you could literally see the steam rolling off the pavement and sidewalks. it was weird. and hot. and... well, steamy. like, from the ground up to about three or four feet, all you could see was steam. pretty crazy, eh?

today, my car was once again a killer. there really aren't many trees to park under at the sea lab, so i really had to prepare myself for the blast of hot air that pounded me whenever i opened my car door to get in. anyway, with all this murderous heat, my brain has been feeling a tad slow. so, when i was supposed to be coaching gretchen in the statistical tests we need to do on our data, my brain was not as speedy as usual. that is so not cool. i've been forgetting things all day, and i've been racking my brain trying to figure out what TA duties need to be fulfilled tomorrow...

all right, you have my apologies if this post isn't up to my usual witty standards. i blame it on the heat. the highs for the rest of the week are only in the low 90's. sweet!