I did a mile straight for the first time in my life tonight, in something like 25 minutes. As far as I can tell, that'd be a pretty good time if I could pull that off in open water—apparently, the indoor mile isn't a done thing. I thought counting laps up to 1000 yards was hard, but 1800 (sure, I could stop at 1750 and call it a mile, but I couldn't stand to come up ten yards short) is a damn chore. I spent most of the time trying to remember where I was, then forgetting where I was, then trying to remember again. After that, I brought in five of my six 1:30 intervals under 1:20, so it looks like it won't be long before I ratchet down to 1:25. Also, last week I timed my 1000 at 13:30 and my 500 at 6:30. I'm pretty sure my best 500 in high school was 6:48, so take that, High School Dave! Ha!

And: good news! The negative carrier for the scanner has been found hiding between a couple boxes in the office bookshelf! Now I can push those images from the ill-fated ski trip (did I mention the skiing? It was 30 below zero with wind chill, and apparently "groomed packed powder" now means wind-blown ice. I skied every run that was open, twice, and left after two hours..) along with the couple rolls I took at Skamania last weekend.

I love my little foldie. I really should treat it better.

I did it, I did the five stars at PK today. No need to wait until July, no need to do anything any more at all. Mission accomplished, standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier with a sock stuffed down the front of my flight suit.

Only.. it wasn't much of an accomplishment. Barely left a dent. I know I've had hotter curry there, and they called it three stars. Have they gotten tired of people ordering hot then complaining that it's too hot? Or is it me? Has this capsaicin resistance programme really been so effective? I thought the five-star mark would be the objective bar over which I high-jumped my taste buds, but I have my doubts. There's no question I'm eating spicy food more regularly than I ever have before; the question is: am I a different person, a changed man with broader boundaries? Or just another guy abusing his GI tract?

From my 1937 Zeiss-Ikon folding camera:

Looks like there might be some usable images in there. It'll have to wait until I find the plastic negative carrier for the scanner, though.

SpiceQuest 2006 is taking a little break after an unfortunate overdose on Monday: we had Cha burritos, and while their red salsa isn't terribly hot, it does, in large quantity, appear to do bad things to one's digestion. The "secondary burn" was also worse than I've had since I started this mad, mad voyage. Another reason for easing back on my capsaicin resistance programme is I took a small nip of the Jefe sauce at the wings joint and realized I'll never, never be able to eat a dozen Jefe wings. As soon as it got in my mouth, my stomach figured out what was going on and started to complain. The heat was bearable, but even if I kill off all the spice receptors in my mouth, I don't think the rest of my digestive tract will be able to handle it.

On the other hand, though, swimming is going really well. I'm already a little ahead of where I was before winter break after just a month back in the water: I'm now pulling around 3000 yards in an hour, including time for stretching. I can do 100 yard intervals on 1:35 forever, so I knocked that down to 1:30 tonight. After an overpaced 500, not so easy. The real surprise is that I've turned into a distance swimmer: I timed a 500 last week and came in right at 7 minutes, which is almost as fast as I ever swam it in high school. I did 1000 yards in 15 flat on Tuesday. (My 100, though, is over a minute, which is pretty lousy.) So that's the difference 30 pounds and 15 years makes: not good for sprinting, not much difference for distance.

About those 30 pounds: I'm always surprised that starting or stopping swimming doesn't seem to have any effect on my weight, but I just read that studies have found that swimming without a change in diet doesn't promote weight loss. I don't ever expect to weigh what I did in high school, but I could stand to trim a bit of the rind, maybe 5 to 10 pounds.

But I'm not giving up the hot wings, Cha burritos, or beer, damnit!

Tickets to China are purchased. Well, almost. I got them from a weird consolidator site, so I had to jump through some hoops: I fax in a credit charge authorization form, then they give me the e-ticket numbers a couple days later. Sounds like a scam, but I didn't find anything negative about them on Google, and a few positive reviews from people who didn't seem like plants. They were a good $100 cheaper than everything else I found, so it's worth a little hassle assuming everything works out okay. Now we need to decide what to do in China. Spending two weeks just in Beijing will probably get boring.

We got an order of shirts in today, and got around half of them out before the post office dock closed. Sorting out the international orders, I spotted one from Yu Miyake, who composed some of the music for the Katamari Damarcy soundtracks. We get the random celebrity sighting at Panic (the musician Seal is a Transmit user!) and it's always a big debate about how to respond. Do we play it cool and professional? Do we act like fanboys? Actually, in most cases, it's just "wow, that guy's famous—and he's using our software!", we laugh about it, and it doesn't go much past that. But this time, I just had to do something to show how much we love his work, so I wrote "You rock! (heart), Panic" on the receipt. I hope he doesn't think I'm calling him a rock.

Lastly, I've made my last (I hope) big splurge on stuff I don't really need but, oh, how I covet. I finally got a replacement for that crappy macro ring flash I got that stopped working after a month (and which I never bothered to send in for warranty). Sigma (my new favorite cheap photo manufacturer) makes one that's a fair bit cheaper than the Canon ring flash—expect more macro shots here—and an alternative to the Speedlite as well. And that's it for this year. Really!

Either I'm building up my spice tolerance even faster than I expected, or they're just making me think that so they can destroy me with the real spice. I did four stars at PK again today, and it was barely noticable. Now, this was noodles instead of curry, so that might make a difference. But I got the extra hot wings on Monday, and it was also a bit underwhelming. Maybe I'll go for the five stars sooner than planned.

I am a bit worried, though, about frying my taste buds. If I'm really building up a sensitivity to spice-heat, am I also becoming desensitized to taste in general? I don't notice anything so far, but how will I know until it's <screeching violins> TOO LATE? I don't think there's any chance for permanent damage, though: Coke is unbearably sweet to me now, but I think I drank about a gallon a day when I was a kid.