Stop. Or go.

As much as I dislike four-way-stop intersections, due to their inherent inferiority to roundabouts, I have come to understand and live with them. However, there is one thing which still infuriates me, and of course, this is because of the drivers, not the system itself. When I am on my bike, I often find drivers waving me through such intersections even when it is their right-of-way. This is annoying because
(a) it's not always clear to see what their hand-signal really means,
(b) it takes a long time to start on my bike and I can always tell the driver gets frustrated with me,
(c) I wish they'd just treat me like any other road user.

Magic

The entrance hall to my building has some sort of magical property. It has no heating vents or air-conditioning, and yet somehow (probably by magic) it is always the temperature you want it to be. That is, when you've been out running and it's really hot outside, the hall is nice and cool. If it's chilly outside and you're smarting from the wind having cycled home from work, it's nice and toasty warm. Magic, I say.

We won!

It is my duty to report that after the majority of a dismal season of softball, the Smegheads recorded their first win last night. In a comeback reminiscent of the better class of high-school-teen-sports-coming-of-age movies (think Teenwolf, if you will), we were 7-5 down entering the last inning, only to give up seven more runs in the top half. With two outs in the bottom of the inning, we settled ourselves down for another gloomy defeat, only to find that somehow we had the bases loaded. A series of lucky infield hits from the guys and a run of determined RBI-walks from the girls scored us a total of 10 runs that inning, ending with a (and I think I've got the terminology right) walk-off Grand Slam for Brandon as he hit the ball straight over the head of the centre fielder.

Genius.

Football (ish)

On Saturday I had my second college (American) football experience, and my first at Northwestern. We were all suitably impressed by the football team's ability to play football,


the undergraduate's ability to scream incomprehensibly at the field, the cheerleaders' waving of their pompoms, and the marching band's ability to...



...make a triangle. Well done guys.

Anyway, Northwestern won the game 49-48 in double overtime. All jolly exciting.

Coldness

After the unseasonable warmth of last weekend, the temperature in Chicago has plummeted over the last few days. Brr...

Sticky

You've got to feel sorry for the thousands of people who started the Chicago marathon this morning. On the face of it, October 7th seems like a good day to run 26 miles in Chicago - average high of 20C, average low of 9C, what could be better? But the strangeness of Chicago weather was their downfall, and a high today of 30C and humidity around 60% meant that the race got cancelled at noon... www.chicagotribune.com.

This just goes to show that the half marathon is a much more sensible distance.

The penny drops

I have recently decided to stop carrying pennies (yes they call them that here too). They fill up my wallet and the extra weight just isn't worth it. And so I have started leaving them places. I started by leaving them in "Take a penny, leave a penny" jars in cafes and the like but then I moved on and have been leaving pennies lying anywhere whenever I find I've accidentally put one in my wallet or been given one as change. But then I started wondering - does this count as littering?

Dirk Gently

I'm rather excited, for tomorrow there is a new show on Radio 4 - Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. Hurrah. If it's half as good as the Hitchhiker's series then we're all in for a treat.