That cliche is hot

I usually live in areas with hot, humid summers. Perspiration drips off me instantly when I crack the door open. My poor towel-drying skills beccome laughable and moist becomes a state of being. Today, I'm visiting a climate where "it's a dry heat." I know of people who don't buy it. They say, "hot is hot." After a day in Phoenix where the mercury was licking the hundred teens, I am not one of those people. A temperature of 115 is a microwave on low. It makes all surfaces in the sun, particularly asphalt, radiate heat. Walking through a parking lot in mid-day with the sun beating down from above and the asphalt radiating heat upwards, leaves only a small section of my t-shirt covered torso unscorched.

It may not be fair to compare 115 and no humidity with 95 and humid, but I contend that both are fierce and fiery in very separate ways. In Phoenix the heat is sapping. In DC it seems to be more a wilter. I can't drink enough water in PHX, but in DC I can't get the sweat off of my hands fast enough.

I wonder if the difference is the difference between burning and drowning. It's been a summer filled with lovely weather, so maybe it's merely the difference between whining and crying.

Oh, my heart is breaking all right

I went to see The Time Traveler's Wife last night. Now I know that going to see a movie based on one of my favorite books is courting disappointment, but I thought this would be different. I thought Rachel McAdams could make it all work. She tried, but she couldn't. The movie was a mostly emotionless Cliffs Notes version of the book. On some level I understand that a lot of stuff had to be cut out, but I missed that stuff. Sometimes I missed that stuff with more emotion than Eric Bana ever managed in the whole movie.

My recommendation for this movie is to read the book. In the book, time travel and that desperate sort of star-crossed love are exactly the awesome combination that they should be. In the movie, time travel and love are just kind of there. They happen. I'm not sure the screen captured anything that the book didn't, except Rachel McAdams and even she wasn't enough for me.

I'm skipping ahead in time to the next Audrey Niffennegger novel. Update: It's out! I'm skipping ahead in time to when I'm reading it.

Supersonic August

This month is zipping by. My weekday evenings are filled with Ultimate, working out, and various social gatherings. My weekends have been busier than that.

Feeling like a first-class jet-setter flying coach, I took to Chicago two weeks ago Saturday to catch a wedding. I arrived by plane, subway train, bus, and a mile walk on or to the boulevards of the University of Chicago. With overnight bag strapped to my back. I wandered the empty ivy- and construction-covered campus searching for food, chapel, and something to occupy my time. I found a bit of what I was looking for and then stumbled on to the wedding party early and by mistake. Fortunately, catching a wedding does not require the same stealth that catching a fox might.

My love for the wedding has only grown stronger in the last few years. It's not the wedding, as much as the eating and dancing of the reception, but for the sake of brevity, "I like weddings." This one proved no exception. The company of the groom, his new bride, their friends, and friends I haven't seen for years were so delightful that I almost forgot to dance. Almost.

It may have been during Aretha's "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" that I looked up from the flailing I was doing and realized that I was lip-synching right along with 11 women. I was the only male on the makeshift dance floor in the lobby of the SmArt museum. One friend turned to me and said, "I'm glad I know you or I might think you were a little creepy."

I think it's the beard.

As the night wound down and the line dances grew in complexity, I was whisked away to Amy's where I was treated like the princess and the pea. On a hard floor stacked with multiple area rugs for padding I laid my weary head down after several hours of catching up. I felt no pea and instead slept wonderfully secure with old familiarity and thoughts of how nice these good people had turned out and how wonderful it was to see them. In the blink of an eye I was back to work and answering "What did you do this weekend?" with, "Went to Chicago."

Last weekend, celebration of a different sort convened on the beach of South Carolina. My roommate from sophomore year of college had a 30th birthday party in a beach house. My friends have been rocking the 30th birthday and this was no exception. It was really neat to see how the people I knew had grown up in the last few years and to meet people from his high school and his post-collegiate life. Everyone got along well and had a good time. I stayed up to watch poker one night, but mostly I couldn't hang with the late night crowd. For the weekend as a whole, I was particularly pleased with the camping that C and I did on the way there and on the way back. It pleased my desire to be rugged and thrifty which was deeply offset by the huge house a block from the beach, not that I don't have desires to be treated like beach royalty too. It's conflicted in here sometimes. We stayed one night at Jones Lake State Park. C had been laughing about the brochure that called the lake "tea-colored." The brochure wasn't turning mud into hyperbole, instead when we went to swim, we found ourselves in what looked and felt like a big cup of tea. We made the most of it, but I probably could've seeped a little less.

This weekend I'm packing which has been broken up by long periods of not packing. Soon it's on to the next adventure. Hi-ho blog reader. Away!

BAM. Life changed

Yesterday was completely different than so many before it. The sandwich has been moving out for days and we said our goodbye earlier in the week, but when I got home in the evening, the big stuff was gone. My house was huge, or bigger than small and my books had nowhere to call their shelf. It was like I'd been robbed and the thieves did some vacuuming.

I will miss the sandwich for more than just his stuff. He always listened to my rants and I enjoyed his perspective on the world. In some ways, I think he grew up right in front of my eyes. S has good taste in roommates, I'll give her that. This week when I came home and the car was gone, sadness bubbled up inside me. The bubbling sadness, sometimes mixed with nostalgia has been happening a lot lately. I pass by things I never really even cared about and think, "this could be the last time," or "I still haven't..." The last time I walk home and grab a bite from the generic Potbelly? I did that three times ever. Or I still haven't been to Nicaro? The Spring isn't getting torn down, I can still go. I guess six years in a place has made the "end" a little confusing for me. It is like 1/5 of my current existence we're talking about.