Live from Austin!

Well, I got home and discovered that the kitchen ceiling wasn’t where I’d left it. It’s probably just my getting conventional in my old age, but I can’t help feeling that ceilings are best kept overhead, rather than strewn in large soggy chunks over the countertop and floor.

I walked through the result several times before I could quite convince myself that it was real. It looked rather like something from the set of The Young Ones. I could hear Zack noises faintly from upstairs; he’s the teenage son of our landlord, and I have a sneaking suspicion that he might be somehow involved in the remodelling of our kitchen. If he is, I hope he’s working on a really good excuse. I’m not sure if Michael is the kind of father who goes apeshit; but if he is, I think today might be his day.

I spent the next hour and a half cleaning the ceiling off of the floor, disinfecting everything, and otherwise tidying up. After that, the sweat was literally dripping from me, so I took a shower. In a little while I’ll probably take some pictures of the remaining ceiling tiles, which have some interesting brown bulges that weren’t there before and look somewhat ominous.

I did not lose my temper, rant, rave or scream. I just calmly cleaned everything up.

Today has been particularly hot and sticky. As I walked to work this morning, Boston was bathed in a thick haze of moisture—almost fog-like. As I arrived at the office, the locusts in the park were playing their “Oh boy, it’s going to be hot” rasp.

The net has been not-so-hot. I’m not sure whether it’s Code Red II or a backhoe through a fiber or what, but I’ve been pretty much unable to reach the Internet for much of the day.

At the weekend I went to a colleague’s wedding. It was a big Italian wedding, which was kinda interesting as I’d not seen much genuine genuflection before. All the hymns and prayers and stuff seem to be completely different and unfamiliar. Like the other big weddings I’ve been to in the last couple of years, it made me glad that our own hitching was a quiet and relatively informal affair.

I took the digital camera to the wedding and reception. It seems to behave strangely in low light - it copes better than film, but you get a really interesting ghosting/smearing effect on anything that moves. The end results often look like deliberately arty Photoshop work.