long break

I think I'm marking about 1 year that my posting has been decidedly irregular. This time, illness, a tough time at work, and getting out of the habit of posting have done me in. It's (somewhat) near the start of a new month, and I'm trying to start up again.

I'm in a motel room now, nursing a minor burn on my knee. I made the mistake of testing the water in the shower, then jumping right in. Within the 10 seconds after I'd checked it, the temperature spiked to scalding - and it wasn't remotely at the maximum temperature. Isn't that a safety issue?

A few months ago, I jumped into a shower and found the opposite - that the lukewarm water in the tap was a remnant of being in the walls or something, and that I actually had no hot water whatsoever.

After a long, cold (and when did that happen), wet day, my first impulse is to peel everything off and hop right into a shower. By now, you'd think I would know to check such thing.