There is much to recap in the blog. All will be recapped in time. In the meantime, let us celebrate a week where heat, for once, didn't win.

Monday: With a Specialicious deal, truffled deviled eggs, sweet potato fries, duck spring rolls, and chocolate cake at Eleventh Street Lounge with Sheri. She is starting grad school on weekends, and it's basically the best grad school ever. How so? Sheri's now writing a book report about Gladwell's Blink. I enjoy Mr. Gladwell as much as deviled eggs.

Tuesday: The Great New Yorker Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2010 continued. After falling off the wagon for four months last spring — the issues stacked half a foot high on my coffee table — I've been reading like James Wood on Summer Quest. Am down to the low single digits.

Wednesday: At the Brickskeller, a mini-Salzburg reunion. Maegan was visiting for a conference (she studies people like me!), and Jess had flown back to the city hours earlier after spending the summer in Hawaii. Jamie almost made it but had to work. At least he got to be on the radio. We had planned to drink Stiegl, the semi-official beer of Salzburg and the palace. Finding Stiegl out of stock, we drank the Weyerbacher Imperial Pumpkin, which was like drinking pumpkin pie. (Hey, Randy, let's see your sweet potato pie do that.)

Thursday: Dinner with Cleo and Jeremy at We the Pizza, thanks to Jeremy winning large in the U.S. Air Force Band's composing competition, the Sammy Nestico Award and the prize bringing them to town, I'd heard mixed opinions of Top Chef Spike's new place, but the burger from his next-door Good Stuff Eatery gave me faith. We weren't let down. The salami pie was good, and the mushroom-and-truffle pie was amazing. The beer and the table on the Pennsylvania Avenue sidewalk on a nice night in a while also worked.

Friday: Green Zone. Introspection. Chocolate chip Edy's. Exhaustion.

Saturday: Bethesda sidewalk brunching with friends and bottomless mimosas, which are like friends. Whoever thought of mixing orange juice and champagne — Joe Mimosa? Mary Mimosa? — was genius.

How could he or she have known that years later orange juice would be my coffee? Later in the day, Jen's housewarming party. She didn't move, but two new roommates moved in and her fiancee joined the lease. Best kind of move! Victory: A chef made me a chocolate soda.

Sunday: Virginia wineries with Laura and the top down on her Jeep. The three places we hit on the beautiful day were all successes…

Mediterranean, where there was pork and basil off a grill; Marterella, where I almost got to pour; and then Gadino, which was nice to see thriving after some lean early years. To end the day, I visited stately Cooper Manor, where there was flank steak and my visiting brother.

Today: Now, blueberry banana bread. Later, the fam and the Nats.

You come across all kinds of Threadless designs you forgot existed?*

The indie retailer's new Shoppe6 store was a nice Internet surprise. I didn't remember half the stuff. Maybe because Chicagoans of various attractiveness weren't wearing the designs for us? Who knows, really.

Clockwise from top-L: Han Solo Pop, Clip Art No. 2 Behemoth!, Cosmic Chip Cookie, and (the best name) You Dont Bring Me Flowers Anymore.

*This endorsement is completely unsolicited and unpaid. Which, if you are a Threadless fan, you understand. The rest of you, get with it.

(And the rest of the Society6 Shoppe is amazing. 60 pages of shirts.)

Raspy-voiced Selma on Night Court grew up selling her cartoons and humor essays to The New Yorker. Like it was nothing! On Google News, with some work, you can find a description of one of the cartoons. Two little girls attend another girl's party, and one says to the other, "She never discusses her age, but I know she has her second teeth." Ha!

Bonus links: Parts one, two and three from the pilot episode of Night Court, in which Selma gets two lines, both excellent. Also, the movie I half-watched recently that led to this posting. Plot: A drunk, old Peter O'Toole meets Larry from Perfect Strangers. Selma has a small role.

(Best line from the Night Court pilot? Harry: "I own every record Mel Torme ever made. I'm gonna marry the girl that's impressed by that.")

It makes one all right, though you hadn’t thought of it,

Rest of the poem by George Bradley.

The other good things about this morning? The actual sun. The reason I couldn't take Green Zone as seriously as I wanted last night (because the love of Michael Scott's life is no one to trust with WMD info.) Wisco: A Tribute to Wilco's Summerteeth, recommended by Crumbler and within three tracks my favorite tribute album in a few years. The fact St. Pete Times reporters feel free to write "The room is hot and smells of boy."

What I keep doing this summer is putting water on my face. Wherever I am, into the bathroom, flip the lever or turn the knob, turn the knob the other way when the plumber made a mistake, hear the water rise in the faucet, just a second, down into the basin, and then I can start to catch the stream. The water feels like nothing on my hands. Palm or fingers, no matter, just passive, untipped and distracted conveyances. The cupped water is a lowercase faith, and I splash it all over my face.

In the mornings, I do as much before I leave the house. After walking to work, it's the same. They say this summer is our warmest ever, and the sink at work is a backward one. I get home from the job and until bed I use the water. I splash what I can, push it across my forehead, soak my beard, and let the runoff drip into my eyes and off my chin. I walk away and return to whatever fleeting I had to do. My shirt dries before I need to go back for more. I've never had to do this before.

Maybe the fever has been low-grade and lasted all summer long. No thermometer is responsible here. People around me call this week a win, and I've been trying hard not to lose. But now the week is over and feels like nothing. The water runs, and the effect is momentary, the next week in heat refusing to break. The thermometer is merely the bringer of news. I need to cool down, and I've forgotten how.

The Facebook news feed, where your world comes together.

I've tried.

I really have.

But, via Meghan, I can't beat this.

Long live the single-topic Tumblr. Sincerely, exhausted Patrick.

I'm tempted to embed the Barry Manilow song here, but I can't. I love Copacabana and the phone booth scene in Can't Hardly Wait, but that's where the love ends. So, music-less, sorry for the minimal posting this week. My team at work is launching a new publishing interface we've been building for the past month, and I began the newsroom training today. People emerged smiling, so that was good. Will catch up soon.