A Break in the Heat

Finally our heat wave has broken. Last night around 6:30 pm a rainstorm passed through the area and dumped a wonderfully gentle but heavy sunlit rain onto us, dropping our temps from 102F (38.8C) to 88F (31.1C) in a few minutes. Another storm coming through in the early hours of the morning dropped the heat down even more. I can breathe again, I don't feel like a sticky piece of rubber baking on a hot sidewalk, I didn't stick to the sheets while sleeping, I'm SO relieved! This was a miserable stretch of days and we really needed the break. It's only July and we may still get some hot days, but I'm very happy about a weekend that will only have high temps in the 80's instead of the 100's. Yippee!

I did get a lot finished yesterday. I got a 100% on my final exam, I did three loads of laundry, I did a second run-through beta for Lai, and I finally finished my AinA, or at least it is ready for a serious edit. This turned into a monster story, one of my longest to date, but the characters insisted and Glorfindel actually GLARED when I suggested that he might want to be a bit less wordy or cut out a scene or two. Oy! So I'm well into the edit now and I'm pretty pleased with it. I also am fleshing out my LOTRO Community story for June which is a fixed length story of an arbitrary number. I chose 333 as my number. Why? Why not! It's been a while since I forced myself to write in snippets and I'm pleased that I gave myself the assignment. The story is almost written, it just needs a good ending and then shaving to fit the word count.

This isn't from my class, but it's such a pretty plot diagram...

I am still researching for my NaNoWriMo O-fic. I need to sit down with plotline outlines and start developing some character sheets for my main and secondary characters. That will be fun, so I hope I can start on that early next week.

And Le Tour de France hits the mountains today! As always, I am a total Tour geek, as I have been for many years. Yesterday's crashes pulled some serious GC contenders out of the run for Paris and the crashes on the flats over the past five days have played havoc with the general peloton completely. But Team Sky is protecting Cavendish and Team BMC is riding well for Cadel, and Fabian Cancellera had a full week in yellow. He'll lose the jersey today, but it's been a great ride for Radio Shack-Nissan. I'll have my TV on at 7am, and I hope I get the chance to see the prime time tonight also.