What is the opposite of an Indian Summer? Is there a word for this phenomenon? Because there is clearly a serious heat wave affecting most of the United States right now, but here in Seattle we are bundled tightly in our sweaters and scarves and hipster-chic fingerless mittens--except I'm not sure if hipsters still wear fingerless mittens. Maybe by now that's passé, although skinny jeans are apparently still not.
I digress.
It is cold as hell in the Puget Sound area, which has apparently not gotten the memo about it being the middle of July. The Seattle PI reports that we have had a total of 78 minutes of summer so far this year, "summer" here being defined by temperatures exceeding 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Translation: I have five days left to spend in this walk-in refrigerator, and I cannot wait to get back to a part of the country where there are seasons and they make sense. Also, I miss thunderstorms. Thunderstorms are cool.
Tuesday Paula and I conducted our last Seattle shenanigan, since yesterday she flew to New York to surprise her gentleman friend. We picked about a thousand pounds of raspberries outside the house where I was cat-sitting (except it was probably more like two pounds, but we did fill two colanders, which we then emptied into a giant bowl), and then ate most of them while we sat around the kitchen table reading back-issues of Time. We are clearly very exciting people. Paula decided to re-enact a scene from her childhood, and also from the beginning of Amelie, and I immortalized it through the magic of Hipstacam:
And then we saw Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (part deux). You guys. YOU GUYS. There is a movie theater just north of Seattle that is not only 21+, but which has waitstaff who will bring you food and grown-up beverages during the film. We split a pitcher of sangria because we are classy ladies like that, and cried like little girls during the sad bits. I still hate the Epilogue more than anything, but, as it turns out, the narrative functions better as a film than it did as a book, and also Alan Rickman is a genius. On the drive back to the University District, we were nearly run off the road by someone who swerved into our lane at 70 miles per hour without signaling, which, sadly, is the type of driving I have come to expect in Seattle. We didn't die, which is the important part, but I did yell a few rude words.
My apartment, meanwhile, is in a state of chaos at the moment. My parents arrived Wednesday morning to help me pack, but between practicing for the piano proficiency exam (again), work, and Dido, I haven't been able to contribute as much as is necessary. How does one acquire so many things in a two-year period? I packed up two garbage bags full of clothing to donate, as well as a mess of canned food, a box of books I'm never going to read again (sorry, Mary Barton and Shopaholic Takes Manhattan), and nearly all my kitchenware. Yet, still! My apartment is filled to the top with cardboard boxes full of things that need to go either to my parents' house or to the new apartment in Chicago, and the messiness of it all makes me dizzy. I could clearly never do any of this on my own, so thanks be to my parents for being better at moving than I am, and for helping to keep me motivated during this stressful process.
It has occurred to me, meanwhile, that the Oxford comma, which I never used before it was stricken from the Oxford Manual of Style, and now I use it all the time--twice in the last paragraph alone! Curiouser and curiouser.
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