Back down south

Seattle was HOT and HUMID! The whole time we were there - nearly a week - the temperature was above 100, and 15-20 degrees warmer than the average for this time of year. And of course no one has A/C. We sweated and sweltered, didn't sleep well, and I had no energy. Once the shade hit our friends' backyard in the afternoon, it cooled down a bit, and a quick dip in the pop-up pool or standing in the spray of Charlie's ingenious "Arizona sprinkler" did help. The bees were busy, and the deer flies were buzzing, and I swear we heard a bear in the bushes several times. Never did see him though. The one benefit of the heat? the smell of pine and cedar trees on a hot day....mmmmmmm! And of course it was still about 10 degrees cooler in Seattle than it was in LA during that week. You do know there's no such thing as global warming, don't you?

Traveling during Mercury retrograde is always fun, too. When we booked our flights, we ended up flying up at a really weird time - we usually fly out first thing in the morning (which is normally the cheapest), but we ended up with a flight at 5:30 pm on a Friday night (which was the cheapest this time - go figure!). Of course, the outbound flight was delayed. First by a half hour. Then an hour. By the time we actually took off, our flight was two hours late. We didn't land until 10:30 or 11 pm, picked up the rental car and drove the hour to our friends' house, where we arrived at 12:30 am. At least there was no traffic at that hour. Coming back home wasn't quite as bad. Our flight was only delayed by a half hour or so, and we landed in Long Beach with 7 minutes to spare before curfew. If we'd been 7 minutes later, our flight would have been diverted to LAX. Yuck.

My honey got to celebrate her birthday with her long-time friends, BBQ, cake and ice cream. We got to see her dad every day, and spend time out of the hussle and bustle of our everyday lives. I wish it had been a little more restful; it was awfully hard to get up and go back to work right away. Hopefully our next trip (October) will be more restful!