Summer flavor

So today was the Summer Solstice. "Sun stop," for all you Latinists out there (me). Apparently, if you happened to be standing outside at (local) noon, your shadow would have been the longest possible. Ever.

However, I did not see my longest shadow ever, because at local noon for South Bend I was shut up in my lab, either cutting bone or slacking off. There's a lot of slacking off in my lab. It's kind of the culture.

Also, I definitely meant to watch sunset this year, but I didn't. Instead I was in my room, wasting still more time on my laptop. Which inevitably calls to mind one of my favorite scenes from The Great Gatsby, when the ineffable Daisy Buchanan utters these ageless words: "Do you always wait for the longest day of the year and then miss it?"

Yes, Daisy, I do.

I love my laptop, by the way. I'll probably post an entry dedicated to him soon. His name is TIM. And in case you're wondering, no, I did not name him after the beaver who seems to share his name. I named him TIM long before I found out Tim Beaver existed. Ergo, in a relativistic sense of things, my laptop was named TIM before the beaver was named Tim. So there. ;)

You may also be thinking it's weird/geeky/nerdy/insert-adjective-here to name your computers, but really it's not. Computers have always needed names, for networking purposes and such. So my personal thought is, why not give them actual names? Especially when said name actually means something to the owner.

Other random stuff going on, today was my parents' 32nd anniversary. Today was also Harry Potter's birthday, and probably should have been the day Book 7 came out, but I guess someone decided that delaying it a month would be a better plan, commercially speaking. As if the book wouldn't break all the records anyway.

Bitter much? Yes, just a little.

(EDIT: It has come to my attention that Harry was not born on the solstice, but rather on July 31, also known as Lammas, which used to be the solstice but no longer is, thanks to the precession of the equinoxes. And in case you're wondering why in the universe I know about the procession of the equinoxes, I used to be an astronomy nerd. Science Olympiad forever, baby.)

Other random comments: okay, I actually do read Jess' blog, I was just being sarcastic in the other comments, as I am wont to do. I pretty much stalk the MIT blogs, actually. It's kind of a bad habit.

More exciting news: I got my FPOP decision yesterday. Quick explanation - FPOP is MIT-speak for Freshman Pre-Orientation Program - they're basically wicked cool explorations of one particular academic or social area. Anyway, I got my first choice, Discover Mechanical Engineering! Because making robots is sexy and we all know it. I even went so far as to create the Facebook group for the DME'ers - which I named "Robots Are Hot." Clearly I am a geek, but I'm having hella fun with it, as my California friends would say.

By the way, I am utterly surprised I actually have readers. Thanks for all your comments and such guys, I don't take it for granted...you make this actually seem meaningful.

Oh, one more thing, which is kind of embarrassing but I'll tell you anyway because you may find it funny. For some reason my internal clock has been completely off today, probably because it's summer and all the days sort of run together, like all the different flavors of ice cream in a big cone. Instead of getting Monday flavor, and Tuesday flavor, and Wednesday flavor, and so on, all I get is summer flavor...one big, sticky, undifferentiated scoop of day.

So the net result of all this was that, this afternoon I thought it was Monday, and tonight I thought it was Friday. Which basically means that I am probably going to hate getting up for work tomorrow because it'll seem like Saturday.

When did summer vacation get so hard?