My work presentation is over. I do not have to give another one for a while. It must not have been terrible, because some attendees suggested I could come talk to their groups. But it sure wasn’t fun.

For the record, I enjoy talking — a lot. I just don’t enjoy standing up in front of a group to do it.

Rudi has taken the concept of the meme and turned it into a memoir on his personal music history. And he has passed the torch on to me to do the same.

Some people would give lazy, impatient readers a hyperlink to jump down to the survey at this point. I am not such a person. Scroll down yourself if you’re that impatient. Otherwise, journey back in time with me…
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D.C. schoolchildren have been sent home for the day because it’s too hot in the school classrooms.

My building decidedly does not suffer from the too hot syndrome (couldn’t they spend a bit less on AC and pay each of us a smidge more?), but I’d like to go home nonetheless. Or, even better, to the beach.

Let’s start with the good news. I did succeed in:

• Seeing the Toulouse-Lautrec and Lichtenstein exhibits at the National Gallery
• Making strawberry shortcake
• Watching a good number of baseball games on tv
• Getting to the farmers’ market
• Putting a new water filter on the kitchen faucet
• Doing some cleaning around the Burrow
• Buying batting gloves and a pot and soil for the tomato seedling
• Watching Bridget Jones II — it started off terrible, but got better after it moved to Thailand (and the Bridget Jones-Colin Firth interview in the bonus feature was very funny
• Knit about 64 rows on my current project

On the other hand, I did not succeed in:

• Buying a couch
• Getting out on the bike — just too hot for me
• Potting the tomato
• Going to the Pride parade — again, too hot
• Watching Kitchen stories
• Enjoying the exhibits at the National Gallery — it was just too crowded (a friend compared it to standing on the Metro at rush hour) and I forgot I don’t particularly care for Toulouse-Lautrec’s style (although the rooms that focused on how TL and his contemporaries portrayed the same subject were interesting)
• Making the apartment look like we’d done any cleaning

I don’t know. It just seems like the weekend should have been better than it was. Too many expectations, I suppose. But this week holds the promise of a sneak preview on Thursday and cooler weather towards the end of the week, so I suspect I will lose the funk that’s been hovering over me since August temperatures arrived a week ago.

The Mets just helped the National League East sweep their American League opponents in dramatic fashion with an in-the-park homer by Marlon Anderson to tie the game in the ninth and a three-run homer by Cliff Floyd with two outs in the tenth. This just proves, of course, that NL teams are superior to AL teams.

And let’s recall that although Cy Young was an AL hero, he did play for them before they instituted their silly DH rule — and he hit .321 the year he led the Red Sox to the 1903 World Series.

Just got an email from the guy heading up our softball team. Apparently the D.C. softball fields are flooded from the torrential rain earlier in the week, so the powers-that-be seem to feel we shouldn’t play. I don’t know… I probably wouldn’t have minded a water polo-style softball game. Could have been fun!

I guess this is the heavens’ way of telling me that I should hie myself to a batting cage and to a park to toss around the old ball (and to Target, at Dad’s suggestion, to pick up some new batting gloves).

Here’s hoping I haven’t forgotten everything Dad (and my high school softball coaches) taught me…