What was I just saying, about not being ready for fall? Something about needing "a little more time to soak in the honey-colored, sun-saturated end of summer"? Well, I got it. And how. We've had record-breaking high temperatures over the last few days. Now I remember exactly what it was like in July, when the humidity made even my eyelids sweat, and it took two or three showers a day just to make life bearable. Trips to Herrell's every afternoon. Dreaming of the beach. That line from To Kill a Mockingbird.
I'm really grateful for this little reprieve. It was a great weekend, full of small surprises. On Friday, we escaped into the cool of a movie theater to see The King of Kong, a documentary about the race to break the top score on the classic arcade version of Donkey Kong. (If that sounds official, it's because I paraphrased the synopsis. I myself know nothing of arcade games.) The film was surprisingly moving and engaging. At first, I thought it was a mockumentary, because the people it featured were such caricatures of video game fanatics. But the filmmakers did such a good job of drawing us into this little world of gaming that I was soon rooting for the hero, and booing the villain, and laughing at the funny parts, and crying at the heartbreaking ones. The entire audience was caught up in the story, and people broke into spontaneous applause at more than one moment. I think we were all surprised at how much we liked it.
On Saturday, Stephen and I went back to the theater to see The Nanny Diaries, which...well, was amusing enough. The surprising part, though, was when we left the movie and found an exuberant band playing jazz and swing music in the lobby. I think they had just finished a concert on the performance stage at the theater, and they were pretty pumped--as was the crowd that quickly formed around them, ourselves included.
There were other nice surprises, too, like the offbeat ice cream flavors we tried on Friday and Saturday--Earl Grey, Mexican Chocolate, Cinnamon Banana, and Negative Chocolate Chip (chocolate ice cream with white chocolate chunks). And the bubble machine we passed on the way home from dinner last night--all of a sudden, I looked up to see a waterfall of bubbles cascading over the sidewalk from a high window above the ice cream shop.
We went out to the garden this afternoon to water our poor wilting plants. The tomatoes are producing like crazy, and the nasturtiums are in full bloom, but the corn looks sad and dry. I think it will be good for them all when temperatures cool down tonight. As Stephen says, the fever of this weekend has broken. It's already much cooler than it was at this time yesterday. So maybe that was the last "real" bit of summer, but that's okay. I'm starting to get excited for things ahead.
