My blog has been moved to the new Blogger system. It's much more aesthetically pleasing. According to the main page, it should be more stable as well. We'll see whether that's actually the case.

I'm working on slides for a talk tomorrow. After a few experiences fiddling with slides until the wee hours of the morning prior to a talk, I'd think that I'd learn to start earlier and to spend less time fiddling with the details of the presentation. Many of my teachers still have similar last-minute presentation preparation habits, though, and some of them have been doing this for substantially longer than I've been alive. I'm not sure whether this means that we're all slow learners when it comes to certain topics, or if we're all just a little obsessive-compulsive. But I'm inclined to believe the latter.

It was a hot day. I came home from the office a little early in order to try to work uninterrupted on my slides and perhaps finish them early. I quickly decided that the apartment was too hot for anything but napping, and so I walked to Ranch 99, bought a bubble tea, and sat on a bench in the shade at the local park. A little league team was playing in the park, and I alternated between scribbling an outline of my slide and watching the kids running around. They seemed awfully enthusiastic, though I'm not sure if any of the kids under twelve were as enthusiastic as the kids over thirty who coached them. Any of the kids on the field, old or young, could undoubtedly outplay me handily even if my ball-playing skills were merely rusty and not nonexistent.

Patxi and I have been given a microwave and a rice cooker. I've used both microwaves and rice cookers in the past, but now it feels strange to have them in our kitchen. Unless my shopping habits change, I expect to get more mileage from the rice cooker than the microwave.