Welcome to Summer

Right on queue with the arrival of summer, it got very hot very quickly.  Dry heat though it may be, 105 is just plain hot.  I’m afraid the pleasant evenings watching the Royals games on the back patio may have come to a screeching halt.  It’s still tolerable to have morning coffee out there, but that’s about it.  As a matter of fact, the heat precluded any kind of Friday evening festivities.  We just sat in the dark and sweated.  Yeah, we’ve got one of those new-fangled air conditioner thingy-ma-jigs, but I hear it costs money to turn it on.

Saturday got off to a good start with a little bit of exercise.  We goofed off a little too long and it got hot out, but Donette went ahead and went on her weekend walk and I took off on a nice bike ride.  I decided to ride some hills, which certainly isn’t too difficult to accommodate around here. I headed a few miles out and climbed one of my least favorite slopes in the area, a long grueling hill about three miles long.  It’s a pretty popular route with the cyclists around here for some reason, I have no idea why.  Granted, once you reach the top you’re rewarded with a nice downhill stretch, but it’s a literal pain getting there.  I spend most of it repeating all the worthless hill-climbing tips you read in the magazines;  Breathe through your nose, enjoy the scenery, don’t clench the handlebars, stand up occasionally, and try not splash your shoes when you puke.  Oh well, I need the exercise, no debating that.  By the end of that ride it was nice and toasty outside, so we went back to hiding in the house for the afternoon.  For our evening entertainment we headed up the hill to Placerville for a nice little outdoor festival.  It was still pretty warm out, but the street was nicely shaded and we had a fine time.

Sunday we were supposed to be hosting brunch at our house, but a rather unpleasant spate of work cancelled those plans.  Matter of fact it cancelled a good part of the day.  I do take my Sunday Funday festivities pretty seriously though, so later in the day we headed to a friend’s house for some swimming.  That made for a fine way to spend the evening, we even mixed in a little pool badminton tourney to add a little exercise aspect to the fun.  After that we fired up the grill and enjoyed a nice dinner of chicken and tri tip, two of my favorites.  Made up for the rough beginning to the day quite nicely.