The heat...is not that bad!

Unfortunately, I have grown inured to the heat of the summer. The past several days have been colder than usual, with days reaching low temperatures of 50. Now, however, methinks the regular hot and humid summer weather is back in swing.

This morning I braved the heat of the second floor of my house in order to lie on my bed and try and relax with my iPod and some books and newspapers. That meant I spent an entire morning sweating and hyperventilating, and by the end of said morning, I was ready to shout vituperations. But suddenly, I thought, why should I have to suffer any more than I need to? After all, I have a fun novelty called a fan.

I recently read in a New York Times article about the merits of using fans over AC. For example, people can save 10% of the energy (and money!) they use for AC by turning up the thermostat one degree.

The author of the article and I have two major differences between us. The first one is the blatant fact that he lived in the cities (Brooklyn, I think), and I live in the outskirts of the small town of Champaign. Thus, the author lived in a co-op where AC was hard to come by, expensive, and inconvenient, whereas I have to walk over to the master bedroom and press some buttons to get the air conditioning on. The other difference is that the author had three, industrial-grade fans, and I have my one dinky ceiling fan that is more for ornamental purposes than for actual cooling.

But other than that, we're practically in the situation. We both want to save money and help the environment (or at least, I hope my parents want to save the environment). We both want to cool off in the most efficient method possible. Luckily for us, the fan works. The differences cancel out: the author has powerful fans to cool the entire apartment and I have a flimsy fan to cool myself in a bedroom. Luckily for both of us, the fan is more than sufficient.

In my personal opinion, the fan actually works better. The AC leaves a lasting impact on the temperature of the room, but the fan's brisk, gentle breezes relax and cool me just fine. Next time, bring a small and portable fan on a car trip to the supermarket or mall. After the shopping spree, instead of burning up in the car and waiting for the air conditioning to start its tortuously-slow so-called "conditioning," turn on the fan and let it do its job.

How to relieve one's agony while saving money and trees? Try the fan. After all, once I switched on the ceiling fan, I ceased my sweating and my urge to shout profanities and enjoyed my afternoon well.

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Some Interesting Vocab Words 4.0

Welcome back to the fourth installment of "Some Interesting Vocab Words" (catchy name, eh?)!  Here I present you with yet more vocab words.  This post is super long, because I've been irresponsible and let the pile of vocab words pile on in my inbox.

• callow: inexperienced or immature. 
• pecksniffian, which is an adjective describing a person that hypocritically and smugly affects benevolence and high morals/principles.  Isn't that a great word or what?
• Toothsome may be a word many people already know the main meaning of (the most common definition is "pleasing to the taste").  Toothsome can also mean attractive and appealing, and this definition can also imply having sex appeal.
• Intestable means "not legally qualified to make a will, as by reason of not being of age or being mentally unable to".  Elements that fit in this set include infants, lunatics, and flowers.
• For the word "claque", think "clap".  A claque is a group of people hired to applaud a performer (the afterthought in my email also noted that these people may be hired to applaud, they may also be hired to heckle a rival performer).
• Moirologists are the opposites of members of a claque; moirologists are hired to mourn at a funeral.
• A pangram is a sentence, verse, etc. that contains every letter of the alphabet.  I have a short anecdote: in third grade, my class did an exercise where everybody wrote a pangram.  I wrote the one with the least letters!
• To foist is the force upon, introduce, or bring fraudulently or unjustifiably.
• Coming from the Latin verb neco, necare, necavi, necatus meaning "to kill," the term necrology is used to describe the list of people that have died within a certain period of time, or merely as a synonym for an obituary.
• Foofaraw is flashy and frivolous ornamentation or decoration.  It can also be a fuss over unimportant matters.  Doesn't this word just remind you of fluffy kittens or puppies?
• A longueur part of a book, play, poem, musical composition, etc. is a dull and tedious section.  After these longueur parts always seem so much longer than they are.

Call these words ludicrous, call them inane, whatever: just make sure to use them.  Don't let this list go to waste!

I feel bad now...

...because Mulan updates so frequently on this blog now and I've been caught up with...everything.  I don't even have the excuse of, "But I juggle more blogs AND I write way more on each post."  Because Mulan's new blog features four posts within two days, three of which are just as long as my posts, if not lengthier.

Furthermore, even with the vague aforementioned "everything" that I've been caught up with (e.g. piano, chess, wrapping my head around the fact that it's summer) I've still spent stretches of time on Blogger frequently these past few days.  Some hard evidence: I updated Stiricide plenty since I love that place.  I created, redesigned, and posted--often--on my new blog, The Hu Rants (which was featured in some shameless advertising by Mulan.  Thanks Mulan!).  I completely rewrote my Blogger bio.

In summary, I've been on Blogger for so long and this blog completely flew past my radar.

Actually, I don't feel that bad.  But horrible enough to spend a post writing about how much I feel bad about not updating when I don't even feel that bad.  How's that for paradoxical?

Hi Guys! New Blog!

Mulan is back with a new blog!
It might not be very interesting to everyone, as everybody has their own interests, but I'm a big fan manga and anime, so I've decided to create one more blog, called Mulan's Manga Blog.

The Link:
http://saranesmangablog.blogspot.com

(Okay, I'm sick of the a href tag now...Been posting a LOT of links lately...T.T)

So yeah. Just like our editor Alice, it seems to be my turn doing the "shameless advertising". :)

OK, more rants, this time at 7AM-here in the midwest, at least...

Hmm. That was quite smart of me, no? Last time (I'm not sure though) it was the rant of 10AM. I went to sleep at 10PM, over that, and got up at 4AM for no reason, thus discreetly meaning I've only slept for 6 hours total. Which is not good for my age.

That overwith, here's some advertising for my good editor Alice's new blog that she shares with her brother. It's a new blog, so there are only two posts the last time I visited (2 minutes ago)...

Here's the link:
The Hu Rants

Visit, also comment, and enjoy!
(There, Alice!! I've done the advertising for you!!)