something marvelous

I'm taking the MCAT on Thursday. I just finished a practice test and my score became lopsided in the opposite direction that it was last time. It's so intense to be so consumed by a test. In the end my scores on the sections are being greatly determined by getting or missing one, two, three questions. I know that supposedly all these testing people have done extensive studies and whatever to make sure results are consistent and reliable, but past a certain baseline it feels so fucking hit or miss to me. Saponification? I didn't know what the hell saponification was, but I got all those questions right. Yet I got multiple basic questions about solubility and pressure wrong. At least some of the passages were vaguely interesting - lizards in Puerto Rico with dewlaps that absorb UV radiation, rickets, Aristotle's ideas of violent versus natural motion. Anyway, the world will be a better place starting Thursday afternoon as we drive off into the Sacramento rush hour sunset. Now, off to Matty's house for poker and a beer and a brief reprieve.

On my honest tea bottle cap today it had a quote from Aristotle - "In all natural things there is something marvelous."

frozen into coats, white girls of the north

today it's hot. almost ninety degrees, not bay area weather at all, at least not east bay. most people i've talked to today are grumbling about how awful it is, but i can't get enough of it. there's not much air conditioning out here because it doesn't usually break eighty and even then it's always breezy and pleasant. i love it, i love the humidity, i love the still, hanging heat, i love the warm breeze coming in through the windows.

i feel like i have finally been won over by it out here. i can't imagine not having every single day be beautiful and comfortable, with the exception of like ten days of rain, most of it not even during the daytime anyway. i like the east bay better than san francisco because the fog rolls in over the hills but then always lifts by early morning.

i miss the extreme weather of the east coast, mainly the humidity and real summer weather, warm rain and most of all thunderstorms. there was thunder and lightning ONCE in the almost two years i've been here. i miss blizzards and the first snow and ice storms, but my fondness for extended winter weather is rapidly disappearing. plus, we get earthquake excitement in exchange for an otherwise fairly homogenous climate. winter in sweden is going to be pretty funny.