A Week in July in Brief

Since it seems lame to let an entire week go by between posts for no good reason (does eye fatigue from 7 hours a day of detailed work in Adobe InDesign count?), here is a laundry list of events and observations for your perusal:

- I was very glad when my front driver's side tire shredded off on the highway that I was already in the right lane and that it occurred a full 15 seconds before I would have entered a construction zone that goes on for a while with no shoulder. The AAA guy showed up in less than 15 minutes to change the tire. I now have 4 brand new happy tires on my car, for under $270 total. Nice deal.

- This guy showed up at work this week to meet the curriculum development team and asked several smart questions, which just happened to reflect some of my own views. (You know, smart. It's like he could make an entire career out of intelligence if he wanted to.)

- I dreamed that my linear algebra professor M, who is in charge of the curriculum project, was in the mens singles finals at Wimbledon, playing against Roger Federer and losing desperately. But he seemed to enjoy discussing various aspects of the game with the officials. "I thought that was an excellent shot" he remarked to the chair umpire, after almost killing a ball boy.

- I happened to see the last play of the actual mens singles final at Wimbledon on the big screen in the bar of the restaurant as we were leaving the building. About 5 waitresses were standing around watching and basically attempting to not cover themselves in drool checking out the Thing of Hotness that is Rafael Nadal. Even Roger Federer could not resist feeling up his pecs given the opportunity. (I have since then put an ix-nay on the twice a week restaurant trips, so this may be my last exposure to professional sports for a while. I suspect Robert will be sufficiently motivated by the upcoming Olympics to get our TV reception back online.)

- M treated our group to lunch at the Cool Mint Cafe on Wednesday; the food was good (I had a turkey sandwich and salad) and the building (Arts and Crafts style) was quite lovely. There was a substantial amount of confusion over the iced tea, however. Many of us ordered iced tea when we arrived; then one person noticed "Cool Mint Iced Tea" on the menu. Someone asked the waiter if it was too late to get the cool mint iced tea, and he said, no, the cool mint iced tea is what we would all be getting. So someone asked about its mint content, because they weren't sure they wanted mint tea instead of regular tea, and he explained that it doesn't actually contain mint, but is merely named "Cool Mint Iced Tea" because of the name of the restaurant. It is not unusual for a restaurant to name an item on the menu the "Captain Jack's Fried Catfish Platter" or whatever, but there is not usually this level of ambiguity. (For instance, in this case, you can easily recognize that you will probably not actually be receiving a plate of food that belongs to a man named Captain Jack.) When the tea came, it was regular (good!) iced tea with a lemon slice and a sprig of mint on the edge of the glass.

- On Monday, it was raining so hard between San Marcos and Austin that the interstate was down to about 35 mph northbound. Today, it was full sun and 98 degrees - too damn hot. I even have a visible tan line on my foot from the strap of the mary jane shoes I wear about twice a week to work.