July 13, 2000 -- 9:18 PM EST

Paul noticed I'd been reading a lot of our cartoon books lately, so he brought me a new Calvin and Hobbes collection to try to cheer me up. I miss Bloom County. Sigh.

Today is slightly cooler than yesterday now that it rained last night. Thank God! But that doesn't mean it isn't still hot. All I want to do is think about cool things like popsciles and kiddie pools and snow, and lemonade.

That's my new Mountainsmith Torrent hydrapak. I wore it out last night when I went biking and even though the water coming out of it has that new plastic taste, I love it. 2L of water at my disposal any time I want to suck on my drinking tube, no stopping my bike to get a water bottle out of a cage. Water any time I want when I am out walking/running through my neighborhood. Wheee!

The heat has been giving me strange dreams. Last night I dreamt I was being killed while shopping on-line. I was trying to figure out if I had accidentally clicked "Kill me" instead of "Add to shopping cart." It was very weird, and I woke up irritable, suffocating under blankets and thirsty.

Then, when I woke up for real this morning, I was thinking about my 8th grade English teacher who one day told everyone to rip out a piece of paper and draw a cow. Then he made one girl, Emma, get up and redraw her cow on the chalkboard. Then, he launched into this speech about being clear and accurate with language if you want to communicate your ideas and have them be received the same as how they are in your head, because every single one of us had a different cow picture. Some were looking one way while others were looking the opposite way; some where those black and white dairy cows, others those brown ones. Then he made us write directions to give to someone so they would end up with the same picture we had drawn.

It wasn't the lesson for the day. I remember we were doing a whole bunch of poetry stuff, but I think somebody said something and it launched him off on this tangent.

Somewhere in the background I hear that famous voice nasal-ing "What we have here is failure to communicate."

Strange morning.

Paul did well at the dietitian -- he's up 7 lbs! Yay! Fifteen to go! He came home early though complaining of tiredness. I took my car and went to gym but only lasted twenty minutes before I was home myself feeling headache-y again. Paul woke up and complained about a headache and a sore throat.

Uh oh. We might be sick! Argh!!!!!!

~Astrophe