For the last several days the weather in Seattle has been, as in most places this time of year, consistent: consistently hot. The heat reaches its zenith here at about 4 p.m. and gradually recedes from there. By sun down, a cool breeze wafts off the water, filling my apartment with ocean scents: salt water, seaweed, and shellfish. The summer weather, when it finally arrives, is always worth the dreary, grey, drizzly wait, and not because you can see every mountain around you and the sky is cloudless; the climate in Seattle around summertime is great because it is totally bearable. Rarely does humidity make an appearance in the afternoon, and some mornings the air hangs thick with a chilly fog for a couple of hours. When the fog burns off, the people are ready for the sun, facing the sky in hopes of chipping away at the vitamin-D deficiencies most residents experience.
Summer is not always pleasant.
I spent the season in New Orleans in 2004. Needless to say, the heat brought me down, completely pulled me down to a level of total sloth energy and mild alcoholism. The window units in my and Brian's apartment hardly worked. Rats climbed on the trees outside, and the whole place always smelled like bacon. But those things are not the point. While New Orleans remains one of my favorite places on earth, I would not go back for a summer unless I lived in a fabulous, sweeping condo on St. Charles or Prytania and I could work from home (or not at all). This sounds spoiled and extravagant, and it is. But as I said, the heat and humidity down there is dangerous.
The heavy, dank, unrelenting weather in New Orleans during the summer months made me crazy, unorganized, frustrated, and crabby, not to mention sticky. I couldn't get my thoughts in order because I couldn't get relief from the elements. Granted, things may be different today; I'm no longer in college, and I'm much more organized in general. However, walking in and out of air conditioning, going from one extreme to another so frequently, I just don't know if I could ever do a summer down south again.
Maybe when I'm much older and my blood has thinned.
The best item I've discovered this summer is at Tully's coffee shops: the espresso milkshake, made with soft serve ice cream, vanilla and chocolate together. Once the caffeine kicks in, the treat doesn't last long.
I bid you good swimming, sunbathing, and cooling off!
oh Katie C! I spent that summer in NOLA too and it was a BEAST. I think we had a tropical storm come through? Matthew?
ReplyDeleteI worked an awful job at the library and basically melted every day on my bike ride to campus.
fun fact: summers in the rest of the South are almost as brutal. I haven't felt a temperature below 75 degrees in MONTHS.