On the verge of burning

So it was 37 freakin degrees Celsius today and will be something like 40 tomorrow. I just walked back two blocks from the gym at 10pm and I was already out of breath and sweating like a pig. I like summer but this is much much more than I bargained for!!

Speaking of hot, I've discovered a new species to rival the J-bear -- The Black Cub. I saw two today, and the one in the Bloomberg office was so hot, I physically stopped dead in my tracks and in mid-sentence while talking to the woman that was accompanying me on the visit. Given that DC residents are 65% African-American (one of many new facts I picked up on this trip), there are more than enough variations on the shiny-lean-black-muscle-machine stereotypes in the gym. Black cubs have same kind of appeal as Malay cubs, except that their bodies are softer and they look more brutal. But this is in turn counterbalanced by a kind of boyishness that their short height and a slight chubbiness in their faces gives them. Brutal and boyish -- woof!

Oh yes, by the way, after griping incessantly about how I will not get to gym this whole trip, it turns out that guests in the DC hotel I'm staying in get to use this huge commercial gym 2 blocks away. So I have been going every day. And all the hotels in the rest of the cities have some kind of gym onsite :)

"99.9 Farenheit degrees, stable now with rising possibilities
It could be normal but it isn't quite
Could make you want to stay awake at night
You seem to me, like a man on the verge of burning
99.9 Farenheit degrees"
- 99.9F, Suzanna Vega