My grandmother didn't have an air conditioner and she seldom used an electric fan. She did things the old way. She had an old Chinese bamboo fan which was also sometimes used as a giant fly swatter. I always avoided the air stream of her fan, because I worried about maggots being flung at me. When her arm got tired from fanning, she sat next to the window and called the wind. I didn't know anything about confirmation bias when I was 5. I believed in her magic. It always worked. When the wind didn't cool her enough, she soaked a cloth in alcohol and rubbed it on her skin. Not understanding specific heat and evaporative cooling, I also believed that this was magic.

I awoke to one of the worst sounds I ever heard. It was a vuvuzela full of saliva blown by someone with insufficient lung power. It sounded like the painful cry of a demonic beast.

I have known for a long time that pepper tastes much better when freshly ground in a pepper mill than when preground. What I failed to realize until now, is that it is even better when the grinding is done inside my mouth. I discovered this when my pepper mill broke, spilling whole peppercorns everywhere.

My contract with Verizon expired a few months ago, but I am still getting phone service from them. I had delayed on the renewal of my contract, because I wanted to see what new phones were going to get released, and because I was lazy. Now it's just procrastination. They called me twice today. No message was left, but I checked the number online. It's a number that their sales department uses. They typically contact me around once a month to try to sell me an upgrade/renewal, but this is the first time that they have done it twice in a single day.

These are the FIFA paintings on display at the Columbus Circle Mall. There are a total of 33 paintings, but I am posting only the 20 decently phographed ones. Click for larger version.

It's something that I watch for every year. Since I was young, I always looked at the sky before going to bed, and I always made special note of when I could still see sunlight outside. 9PM was mandatory bedtime for me until some time in my teens. For about a month every year, bedtime happened when there was still light outside. That just made it feel extra wrong, but it already felt wrong enough without that, because my bedtime was the only mandatory one.

I can now go to bed almost any time I want, with the exception of Sunday nights, but I still make a mental note of when I can see sunlight at 9PM. I wonder how much of my nocturnality is based on rebellion against this imposed bedtime. My primary reason for being self-employed is that it gives me the freedom to choose my own sleeping patterns. I wonder how different my life might be if I had not been forced to go to bed at 9.