The Kessel run, in 12 parsecs

A friend-of-a-friend stopped by over the weekend, spending the night here to avoid a hotel. Turns out, she's like a level 10 conversationalist. After both living alone and not having many friends for so many month, my larynx appears to have atrophied. It was exciting. We basically had like a 10 hour conversation that included Batman, Keanu Reeves, and our mutual friend Kristy. And hotdogs. And why I look down on people who wear shirts with text written "in binary" on them. And actually a lot of other things that would take too long to list. And then I got a sore throat. Apparently there is this thing called laryngitis that you get when you talk too much. Ironic...I can be a fairly quiet guy, and I have a few friends back home who I think deserve to have caught this before I did.

She visited me Saturday and I didn't get the fever until today, so my 10 minute diagnosis made while browsing webmd could be slightly innacurate. Just to be safe I took all of the "home treatment" lists for all sore throat topics and concatenated them into one big list and...long story short I now have a humidifier in my room. I have for over a year avoided buying a humidifier because I thought it would make me look like a big dork, like the character Walter in the movie Sleepless in Seattle. The air in my Philly apartment used to get so dry that my nose felt like I had stabbed it with a knife. I tried non-humidifier solutions, such just sort of wishing the air would have more moisture (ineffective), as well as boiling a large pot of water on my gas stove. The large pot of water worked great until the night I was hanging out with a girl and we heard the fire alarm go off because all the water had boiled off. I threw that pot away.

In my current apartment, I've been facing the same problem. I bought a bamboo plant from Ikea and when I brought it home the leaves turned brown, which according to the internet means that the air is so dry that water evaporates out of the leaves before it can be sucked up from the roots. I still didn't buy a humidifier though. I just moved the bamboo near the kitchen sink, figuring it was at least close to more water. I mean, the entire thing is submerged in a solution of water and rocks. It can't be that bad.

Anyway, now I'm sick, and I have one. This is probably the worst designed humidifier ever; it lacks the ability to regulate its own temperature, or stop automatically, and there is high risk of circuit overload and/or overheating and/or fire. And you have to refill the tank manually, every time you use it. Tomorrow is the day the maintnance people are entering my apartment to test the smoke detectors. Tomorrow will also be the first day I forget to turn off the humidifier, so that will be interesting.

Whatever. I'm not refilling this thing every night. I mean, I am, but this is gonna stop when I'm not sick anymore. Also, since its method of adding water to the air is evaporation, the process is adding heat to the room. My apartment is already 85 degrees (see earlier posts where I complain about the lack of air conditioning in this city) and I've basically just added a heater. And the directions say if it doesn't work (it didn't) you have to sprinkle on some salt (I did). Like a steak. We'll see how this goes. I have to admit, though, I'm in my bedroom right now (where the humidifier is running) and my throat feels a tiny bit better. Although, scientifically speaking, I have no way to be sure it is the humidifier and not the salt water I gargled or the soup or the five cups of tea or the giant dayquil tabs I nearly choked on. Seriously, I don't think I've ever taken bigger pills. I was opening the package, asking myself "do they really need to be this big?" when I heard a still small voice in the back of my head say "THATS WHAT SHE SAID!"

My flight instructor showed me how to do a flight plan last night. Then he sent me home, not realizing just how dumb I am. Since I am supposed to make a flight plan by Friday, I figured I'd get it done tonight. Then I looked at my sectional chart to begin and realized that I didn't actually know how latitude works. I understood the general concepts, yes. Longitude goes one way, latitude goes another, etc. What I did not know, was exactly how this business of minutes and seconds went down, or why there was a "30" on the side of the chart. Apparently, and I'm not happy with whoever came up with this, someone decided that it would be fun to divide units of latitude into 60 minutes, and the minutes again into 60 seconds. Seriously, did they not have the decimal system back then? Our number system is based on the number 10. And who measures distance in "minutes" and "seconds" ??? Whats next, a calendar demarcated in parsecs ?