complaining about the weather being too hot or too humid, when 6 months ago most of us would have gladly started the second great fire of Chicago in order to feel some blood in our cheeks (and you wonder why there are so many cops here?). Still, when it's midnight and just sitting in a chair causes man, woman, and beast to break out in a sweat, there is some justification, I believe, in at least pointing out the fact that it's awfully hot.

I'm back from British Columbia and sitting in the lab listening to the soothing music of a spiking neuron. Actually, this neuron's being somewhat annoying. Just over the course of the last half hour or so it's decided to start responding very robustly to a stimulus that it was really kind of unimpressed with earlier. Well, it's annoying because I'm not trying to study changes like this, at least not just yet. When you don't know how a system works you would like it to stay put while you're studying it. This gets difficult when you're trying to study systems that are there precisely in order to not stay put. Sensory systems, at least at the level I'm working, and probably even much closer to the periphery, change how they process information depending on the behavioral state of the animal (e.g. is he looking for food, or for a mate?) and on its past experience.

At any rate it's somewhat hard to believe that a week ago my major concerns were whether to try to climb up to the north glacier or the south glacier. and how to make couscous taste good after some lousy French-Canadian peasants used up all your salt.