ah, there is much to blog about: wales, oxford, the kidchamp nuptials, london, the wonders of sainsbury's red label tea, the quad cities, another wedding, jetlag, bowling injuries.

we'll start with the most mundane and also the most idiotic: bowling injuries. so k&b were married this weekend, in the quad cities, and the rehearsal dinner was pizza and beer at the local bowling alley. now i am not a good bowler, but that's okay because i have very little ego riding on my bowling skills. i'm quite content to do the silly dance where you wave at the already-sailing-down-the-lane ball in the direction you want it to go in. i don't mind slip-sliding around in the dorky shoes that make my big feet look like clown feet, or the fact that i have to find the only child's 7-lb ball in the room because i'm too wimpy to throw a real ball. but i reached a new low this weekend when i actually slammed the bowling ball (mid-forward-swing) into my own leg, leaving a giant purple bruise and egg-sized welt on the outside of my right knee. really. i couldn't make this stuff up if i tried.

pictured: the bride-to-be posing with The Hammer, a ball so heavy we had to lob it sideways down the lane.

turns out that central park isn't a thickly-forested den of thieves and murderers shrouded in eternal darkness, after all. my father was not a fan of new york when i was a kid, and, absorbing his opinion, i always pictured central park as this incongruous tangle of forest that was tolerated, rather than cultivated, by the rest of the city. as though the colonization of manhattan had gone just fine until they got to the center and discovered why the natives had given them such a bargain: the epicenter of the island was indomitable jungle. as it turns out, it's quite lovely on a summer's afternoon, and filled with sun-dappled tourists, new yorkers, and those wacky rollerskaters.

to say that hot weather makes me cranky would be an understatement. it actually sucks my will to live. depending on which report you believe, the heat index today fell somewhere between 105 and 110. in chicago. where all the buildings were built before central air. monday was just as bad, and now they're saying that it'll be thursday before any cooler air arrives. at 10pm as i'm writing this, the heat index is 102.

of course, i have no real right to complain - my health isn't threatened, after all, i'm just grumpy, sweaty, and unproductive. just let the power go out at our apartment, like it did for most of the central/south side of chicago yesterday, and then i'll really start wailing. of course, if there is no power, i won't be able to blog about it anyway. bad for me, good for the rest of you. this heat wave has swept the entire nation, so pretty much everyone reading this (with the possible exception of mari) has either just survived the heat wave, is in the middle of it with me, or it's coming for you now.

the first circle of hell was for those sinners in limbo. that's a fairly accurate description of how we're feeling about now. when will this ever end?