Got back from Chicago early yesterday morning (just before 1 am) and slept off most of the trip fatigue until almost 2 pm; following which, I had a craving for curry and so decided to cook beef curry with chickpeas and broccoli. I foolishly mixed dried chickpeas into the mix, thinking that they were going to get the water needed for reconstitution from the curry anyway. What I didn’t count on was the dried chickpeas absorbing something like 400% their volume of water, making my concoction more like chickpea curry with beef. Oh well.

Went to a friend’s place to watch Team America: he bought the collector’s edition DVD, complete with extended and uncensored scenes. Was amused at the extra Kim Jong Il song at the end of the credits. It was sweltering hot at his place so I offered my (heavily air-conditioned) place for the postprandial mahjong session; drove them rather nuts by breaking out at random intervals into “I’m so ronery”. But the occasional spill aside, I think it went well: 7 of us played mahjong and three-man bridge until 3:30 am. Riotous fun.

Following which, I fell fast asleep only to wake up an hour after dawn, i.e. only three hours later. (I know, summer can be quite a killer that way!) Ended up walking into lab early in the morning, feeling pretty chipper, only to discover that there was something wrong with the computing cluster. After some snooping around with a group member, we found out that the air conditioning failed last night and the technicians had to do an emergency shutdown of all the machines. The computer room was apparently so hot inside that they had trouble even holding the doorknob: it was supposedly scalding hot, and the room inside had air that was too hot to breathe!

They won’t let us in until they diagnose and fix the problem with the AC, so we can’t begin testing the machines for heat-induced failure today. So I ended up bumming around reading papers, getting mortage paperwork done, and sneaking in a trip to Jarling’s Custard Cup and a haircut to boot. Quipped about how bankers don’t want an arm and a leg anymore; they want locks of hair. But whatever. I hope the walk back from Jarling’s to campus will justify the incredibly yummy strawberry-custard slushie that I had on the way.

Three more days until Pet Monkey goes home and leaves me a few days of peace. Yay!