--John Cage

Somebody stole spring, and I don't like it one bit.

Really, we went straight from winter to summer. Even by New York standards, this is--

Okay, I take that back. It's right in line with New York standards. It's the one thing I really hate about New York: the weather. I'm convinced that every day, somebody Up There rolls percentile dice to determine the next day's weather... and there are no modifiers from the previous day's roll. It's like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates: you never know what you're gonna get. We've had 70-degree days with snow still on the ground.

Anyway, we've been in summer all week, and I'm quickly realizing that merely getting the window fan I'd planned on getting isn't going to cut it. For, truly, the problem is not the heat; it's the humidity. I remember the sauna my apartment became last summer, and I'm recognizing the first signs of it now, and I am not going through another summer of that.

I don't think it generally got this bad in Far Rockaway, even in the absence of fans. Which means that either I'm romanticizing the past, or it has something to do with the fact that Far Rockaway is right on the coast -- my house was fifteen blocks from the Atlantic Ocean -- while Flushing is further inland.

At any rate, I headed to the local discount store, in the hope of finding a cheap dehumidifier. No luck. Fans, yes. Air conditioners, yes. Humidifiers, yes. But no dehumidifiers. Hmmph.

Of course, my family had a bunch of extra air conditioners last year, but I didn't take any of them, reasoning that it wouldn't be fair to my landlords, who're footing the power bill... and now that my family's moved, and they've given them all away, I've belatedly decided that I should've asked my landlords for permission and claimed one when I had the chance. Hindsight is always 20/20.

I'm thisclose to being settled on a host also, after hours and hours of shopping around on the Web. I've got a sheet of paper in front of me with information on twelve Web hosting services, in fact, and those are just the ones that made the initial cut; most got rejected right off the bat. But I've pretty much made my choice, pending the response to an e-mail I've sent to the provider in question, asking a couple of final questions.

Anyway, I'll give you all the details once I'm ready to move to the new place. Which'll probably have to wait a couple of weeks until finals end, but we'll see.

Not that I would even think of hinting anything about my birthday. Which just happens to be tomorrow. May 10th. Just in case you were wondering.

(When it comes to my birthday, I have no shame.)