Well, here I am at a conference in the southern part of Kansas. It's hot. And I mean hawt. Not like where you can feel the warm air against your skin, more like the aggressive, deliberate heat of sitting too close to a campfire. The only break came with a violent thunderstorm yesterday afternoon.

Of course, that's not why I'm here. I'm here for a small interdisciplinary conference on art, math and science. A conference where, over a single lunch, the conversation switched smoothly from the mathematics of fractals to tonal harmonies in Bach's fugues. This is a small, supportive community of like-minded thinkers, and that's why I enjoy this conference so much more than the forty-thousand-person one I'm attending in two weeks.

Last night, we took a side trip to Wichita, to the new science museum there. The architecture was quite impressive; it turns out that the museum was designed by Moshe Safdie, the same architect who created Habitat 67. I used to go out to the water in downtown Montreal and stare at Habitat -- it's quite a remarkable building (though I'm told the apartments themselves aren't entirely ergonomic).

And now, I've got to get out of here, back to the lecture hall. I've got an afternoon's worth of geometry to digest. I hope this explains the most recent thingo hiatus.

It all started with some chairs.

As of this summer, a large chunk of the student union building is closed for a significant bit of remodeling. One day just before they boarded up the construction area, I noticed that all the old furniture had been arranged into numbered lots. My immediate thought was "auction!" followed quickly by "cheap!". After some calling around, I discovered that yes, the lot numbers were for an auction, but that the auction had already taken place. However, there were some items left over that were up for grabs. Chairs, for example. Unfortunately, by the time I went over to see the merchandise, the chairs that interested me had been moved to their new home at the surplus property warehouse. I didn't let that deter me, though.

Over the next few days, I made several trips to the warehouse, first to identify the chairs I wanted, then to pay and pick them up. I eventually purchased four surplus cafeteria chairs at $2.50 each. These are clearly of institutional origin, simple in design and deeply worn. On the other hand, they're dark wood and very comfortable. And they're extremely durable, having already withstood decades of college student butts without showing stress. All of which is more than I can say for the rinky-dink Ikea metal folding chairs we had at the kitchen table until now.

The story doesn't end there, though, because in my trips to the surplus warehouse, I learned about their periodic public auctions. Most of the time they sell to non-profits and university departments, but every so often they fling open the doors and sell sell sell!

The most recent auction was last weekend, and Doug and I decided to check it out. I must say, it was one of the best bits of free entertainment I've had in years. The fast-talking auctioneer was clearly enjoying herself, always shooting for an unrealistic price ("Who will give me a thousand dollars for this chair? A thousand dollars?" *pause* "Okay, five dollars. Who will give me five dollars?"). Overall, I think it was the items themselves that were most entertaining. Some of it was just chairs and desks and tables. Mind you, there were also pianos, making me wish I had more space. Ah, but you know that any lot with the word "miscellaneous" in it was bound to amuse. "Miscellaneous monitors -- 4 pallets" contained about thirty old computer monitors. I think it went for $200 (you have to buy the whole thing!). There was a pallet of centrifuges. One lot contained dozens of firehoses. I put a bid on a set of three geiger counters, but someone wanted them a bit more than I did. I ended up taking home (with Doug's help) a coffee table and two end tables for $7.50. Navy surplus. Highly durable.

Most mysterious were the lots labeled "Misc. Equipment". Stuff. Junk. And yet, make no mistake, Misc. Equipment fetched top dollar from a small set of committed bidders.

Which brings me to the strange title of this entry. One of the lots of Misc. Equipment was too large to fit on pallets. It was twelve pieces, most of which were washing machine sized or larger. The most wonderful was a machine of unknown origin or purpose. It was an enormous metal control panel with buttons, switches and dials. None of which made any sense. A knob's two directions were labeled "Decrease" and "Increase". Four buttons in a row had numbers, but they were 9, 10, 11 and 12. And above those, isolated from everything else, all by itself, was a button labeled "EVENT 4". Presumably you would press that button to cause event four to take place. But what event could be so important as to merit a button, but not important enough to get a name? And why did this machine not also offer events one through three? Maybe scientists have already probed the secrets of events one, two and three and this machine was designed specifically to test event four. The whole thing came across as a kind of Fisher-Price Busy Box of the Damned, one of those toys with meaningless knobs and sliders and buttons to play with, only made out of cold metal and larger than a refrigerator. And yes, someone took the EVENT 4 machine off their hands. I'm fairly confident the buyer's plans for world domination will come to nought. Now, if it had been EVENT 7....

I suppose it had to happen eventually. My father called this morning to tell me the bad news. Yesterday, Flint, my old family cat, started moving a little more slowly than usual, keeping her head down, not eating or drinking. Rushing her to the vet, my parents discovered that her kidneys had failed. There was little to be done at that point other than ending her pain.

She was a wonderful pet and friend. Flint enjoyed a comfortable, happy, varied, and very long life. The latter has always been a bit of a mystery to me. I don't believe we knew anything about raising or looking after cats. She spent most of her life eating crappy cat food and breathing in cigarette smoke (Nath jokes that she had smoker's meow; indeed, there was a Leonard-Cohen-esque quality to her voice). She reminds me of one of those centenarians who, when asked of the secret to their longevity, replies, "whiskey and cigars".

Flint brought a lot of joy to my family, and a small amount of anxiety to a minority of cat-fearing family friends. She was a mighty grey fuzzball who will live in happy memories.

If you've got a pet nearby, give them an extra little snuggle in memory of Flint. As my brother put it, in some very thoughtful words on pets,

Sometimes we take their friendship for granted, but we must always remember the unconditional rewards they bestow upon us by sharing their lives with us. Our lives would not be the same without them.

Wednesday was the anniversary of the independence of that country I'm living in. Which is all fine and well, except that from Tuesday evening until Thursday morning, I thought the city was under attack. People we setting off firecrackers continuously during that time. Everywhere I went, I could hear whistles and pops, loud bangs and piercing whines, all the various sounds that ingenious firecracker makers have figured out how to produce. The peak, of course, was around 10:30pm on the 4th, when the real fireworks show got underway at a nearby park. As if in response to the call of the hive mother, the various amateurs all around us responded to this show with a barrage of their own. All of this put together made it very hard to enjoy the quiet, intricate period piece Nath and I were trying to watch. Mind you, that's probably for the best; I don't think there was much to enjoy about it anyway (The House of Mirth is neither about a house nor mirth -- discuss).

The poor cats had it worst of all. They had thirty six hours of high anxiety and poor appetite, flinching whenever another volley was launched. By the time they got used to the distant and evidently harmless poppers going off in the neighbourhood, their fears were renewed by the massive show at night. They spent a good deal of time under the bed.

Just imagine if setting off firecrackers weren't illegal...

One common philosophy in racket sports is to let the racket become an extension of your arm. If that were true, my arm would be a twisted, bloody pulp.

I don't go out of my way to batter squash rackets while I'm playing. And yet, the racket I own is bent into a whimsical curve. I was getting fed up with its idiosyncracies, so I started borrowing rackets from the sports facility instead.

Last week, during a point, I stumbled a bit and fell near the wall. Fortunately, I managed not to hurt myself except for a bruise on my knee. But the racket had sure seen better days. Normally, an impact on the racket will bend the shaft or maybe distort the head a bit. Somehow, I don't know how, I managed to flatten the top of the racket. I didn't flatten the curve that defines the racket's shape; rather, I squished the metal frame in the plane of the racket. And twisted it a bit. It's hard to describe exactly what I did -- I should have taken a picture -- but I don't think I could reproduce the carnage if I made a deliberate effort.

Needless to say, the staff wasn't impressed and I have been billed for the cost of a racket. The good news is that somehow they buy their rackets for eleven bucks apiece. Heck, at that price I would rather use their rackets and pay the replacement cost from time to time.

I guess the moral is that I still have a lot to learn about squash. For when I am truly a master, and yea the racket is an extension of mine own hand, I should find it inconceivable to beat it against the walls and floor in my present manner. Or maybe it runs in the family, though I believe my father's frequent racket purchases were more a result of bad temper than bad position.

By the way, I won the point.

With George Bush senior, we kept our fingers crossed that nothing would happen to the president, so that we would never be faced with the scenario of having the incompetent Dan Quayle doing real work.

These days, it's just the opposite. We hope against hope that nothing should happen to Vice President Cheney, for fear that then W would have to step in and do real work.

On a related note, I hope everybody had a happy Canada Day.