The rain and wind have finally kicked in. God, how I love stormy weather. Somehow you just feel very … alive … in the midst of a storm.

The weekend is going to be divvied up into going out time and staying in time. Lots of activities demand our attendance this weekend — the farmers’ market, a friend’s birthday party, a friend’s play reading (which we’ll actually get to on the right day this time). Other things we just hope to get around to — the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History closes for two years after this weekend and we have yet to make it to the Jim Henson exhibition. And the 3-month-old tiger cubs go public tomorrow morning. If it’s raining that means all the tourists will stay away, right?

The rest of the weekend I plan to lie around and listen to the rain and sip tea. Okay, yes, I do have a backlog of housework that must get done. But after that, I plan on reclining on the couch with a heap of books and my knitting bag. I’m currently knitting up a storm on the Daisy baby sweater and the latest pair of socks, with a few more projects in the planning stages. And I finished my last book Wednesday night, so a new one must be picked. Anyone have a great recent read?

Enjoy the weekend, folks. May the rain lull you to sleep.

Word is trickling down through Wesleyan’s alumni email list that Middletown’s famous diner, O’Rourke’s, suffered a devastating fire last night. This is terrible news for owner and head chef Brian O’Rourke, for the town of Middletown, and for gourmands worldwide.

O’Rourke’s, a Silver City-style diner, was an amazing place that managed to straddle a line with ease. On weekdays it served your typical greasy spoon food, specializing in steamed hamburgers. On weekends it turned gourmet, however, offering up a menu that was pages and pages long and constrained only by the imagination of Brian and his customers, who came from around the state to taste his creations. He introduced us to a variety of new foods, including colcannon, mashed potatoes with cabbage, and sabayon, a delightful custard. The bread was homemade and you were presented a sampler plate as soon as you managed to make your way in the door. The lines were long, particularly if you got a late start to your morning, but the prices were affordable and it was possible for a family to eat after church without breaking the bank.

It’s still early and details are sketchy about what will happen next. I am hoping that Brian, like my cousin Gary whose restaurant burned to the ground last year, will be able to recoup his losses and rebuild. In the meantime, my heart goes out to him and to his employees.

I think that scientists don’t fully understand why the public dislikes and is confused by science. My theory is that the field has, as have many others, taken concepts that are ultimately understandable and swathed them in language that is so technical and specialized that it is virtually incomprehensible.

I recently read an article about research into the brain’s role on obesity. I have been looking into the subject of obesity for a year now and I still found it hard to follow. This is because in an article that was six paragraphs long it included a ridiculous number of multi-syllabic words (and I like multi-syllabic words!).

Included in the article were gems like

“The importance of these brain peptides and their expression patterns in energy homeostasis is underscored by central injection studies with the peptides themselves, as well as with antisense oligonucleotides that produce a local blockade of peptide gene expression”

and

“These investigations, involving both in vivo and in vitro techniques, enable us to unravel a cascade of factors controlling neuropeptide production, including circulating steroids, glucoregulatory peptides and nutrients, as well as intracellular proteins and lipids.”

The article is neither specifically aimed at the layperson nor at the science community, so it could be that the author did not intend it for the non-science community to read it. But if it was intended for wider circulation, the author (and other scientists who write similar articles) does the field a disservice.

If scientists want to present a friendlier front to the public, they will start teaching their up-and-comers how to present their materials in a way that doesn’t automatically isolate the general audience. As I used to tell science students, explain it as if you were talking to your grandmother. Once you can do that, the public will get behind your work and behind science in general, and it will stop seeming like it’s a club that doesn’t want any new members.

After three days of having what I believed to be the flu, my throat developed white spots and I got a red rash on my chest. No doubt about it — strep.

Swallowing hurts. Talking is now done in a whisper. I don’t want to eat. I can’t sleep.

No wonder my boss sent me home from work today…

I look like those one of those crazed lunatics in their mug shots where you wonder how many substances they’re on. I feel not like death warmed over, but more like death warmed over, allowed to grow cold again, and then left on the floor in the hopes that the dog will eat it.

But there’s nothing wrong with my sense of humor!

I have some sort of bug that has prevented me from doing many of the things I’d hoped to accomplish this weekend — find yarn for my sock pal, read education white papers of the mayoral candidates, and work through de Tocqueville.

I did manage to toddle down to the farmers’ market this morning, but pretty much I’ve moped in bed all day sleeping off and on. I’m on deadline at work, so I’ll have to pull myself together by morning, but otherwise I’d stay home.

Apparently, I will do anything to avoid reading de Tocqueville.

Update (Monday morning): A 102* fever, ague, and two hours up in the middle of the night have convinced me to stay in bed one more day. I awoke in a dead sweat two hours after going to bed last night convinced that the sweater yarn and pattern I bought in the spring would look terrible on me, that the deadline I’m under is going to not be met in a major way, that I’m going to be fired from work, that people in DC weren’t really my friends and were just pretending. Usually I’m pretty unflappable and things like this only stress me out in tiny doses once in a rare while. So clearly my body is trying to fight off some nasty bug and thought I needed nightmares and panic attacks as a symptom to convince me to stay home. So I’m going to listen to my body and am returning to bed. See you when I feel better.

My folks are in town and a fun weekend has been planned.

Tonight, we’re heading to RFK to watch our beloved (and National League-leading) Mets play the Nationals. No, I don’t feel guilty about rooting against the hometown team. I grew up with the Mets, and while I like the Nats, they can’t begin to fill the space in my heart that belongs to the team of my childhood. (When the Mets aren’t playing the Nationals, I am more than happy to root for the Nats to do well.)

Tomorrow we’ll be heading out to Virginia to Wolf Trap to see Peter, Paul, and Mary perform. Mum and Dad have seen PPM perform recently, but Rudi and I haven’t seen them since before Mary was diagnosed with bone marrow cancer. We last saw them perform shortly after we moved to D.C. It was the eve of the war in Iraq, and they sang from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial awash in candlelight. It was a magical, moving performance and I don’t expect this weekend’s concert to compare. But I do expect that it will be a lot of fun — and the weather looks likely to cooperate with our lawn seats, so that makes me even happier.

I’m not sure what else we’ll be up to (although Rudi and I, at least, will fit in a trip to the farmers’ market on Sunday morning), but it’s bound to be a good time.