summer's debut

or, Hike off a Hangover

The perennial drizzle that is associated with three of our four seasons here makes it so very sweet when summer finally arrives in all its warm and dry glory. May and June are never reliable in Seattle, and can be tempermental, but we're having a bit of a heat streak right now (it broke records at ninety yesterday). I'm not sure if people get so excited or involved with the weather in more predictable or even-keeled climes, but it's always amusing to me how people get so riled up over swings in the weather here.

I was feeling crummy yesterday after way too many mojitos the night before (not sure how it got that extreme, it takes a lot for me to get hungover, and I remember walking home late that night). I ended up spending my (glorious) Saturday afternoon hiking every possible trail at Discovery Park (in a feeble effort to keep training for the big climb), and may have gotten a little sun-shocked in the process- between the exposure on the bluff, and the reflection off the beach below, I was drained to the point of comatose by the time I got home from some errands and then was supposed to go out and let loose on Capitol Hill later that night. Sadly, the night ended with the decision being made for me that I needed to be taken home to watch Saturday Night Live instead of remaining at Linda's to be an uninspiring drinking companion. I had been planning on going out and having fun for a while, and I had gone and blown it. Ephin' A. It was for the best, I fell asleep 1.5 sketches into SNL and was lucky enough to be kindly tucked in in my delirium.

But now I feel like a big doofus, since hiking Discovery Park isn't very strenuous, it's not like I was at all tired, or got sore... just one of those enthusiastic Seattlites, like my boss, who got an unusually ugly sunburn on her neck this weekend, beading jewelry on her patio, or the hundreds of NW buffoons who try to drive in the quarter-inch of intermittant snow because they have the SUV-owner mentality and then roll into ditches and telephone poles because they live in Seattle where we get 1.35 inches of snow annually on average, in two bouts that last approximately twenty-one hours total. Raft down the Snoqualmie during record snowmelt? Sure! I, a generally dehydrated individual, chose to ramp up my mountaineering training on a recordbreakingly hot day after drinking myself silly the night before. Yes! Needless to say, I sucked down two bottles full of water and didn't pee once all day.

Above, a photo taken the night before, titled "Mojitos Mo Problems" by the other celebratory individual in the photo. Indicator of what was to come: my classy pantleg.

Playing in the cafe: Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Awesome.

Onward and upward!