Today is hot. When I went to bed last night at three (after getting home from the bar), I was foolish enough to wrap a couple sheets around me; I woke up six hours later feeling suffocated by heat.
It is rare that San Francisco gets hot like this. Because the city of San Francisco sits right on the ocean, we generally get the same weather as would a boat 50 miles offshore. Moving any direction inland, and the weather will change dramatically. It can be 80 degrees in Marin County - where I'm from, less than 10 miles north of the city - and when you drive across the Golden Gate Bridge your car will tell you it is 60 degrees. What's 20 degrees Fahrenheit between friends? But here's the thing: a nice day in the city is around 65.
We had an 80+ degree day back in May, but as I recall I worked at the bar that night. For the past two days, it's been similarly hot, though Thursday was more humid than the drier-but-hotter Friday; I've worked both those days. Today, I have nothing to do but find a pool to sit by.
My male companion and I have plans to go to his parents house a few miles north and chill by the pool all day. I am so excited! I'm going to lie out all day and wear too much sunscreen and read probably five pages of the 60 I need to for Monday, and I'm going to feel like it's finally summer. With summer school getting into full swing combined with working at the bar Thursday and Friday nights I feel I must take full advantage of my weekends. If I were in Portland, I would be floating down a local river with my friends as much as possible.
Which brings me to the "process" part of this post: I miss Portland. The last time it was hot like this I would have called my friends to see if they wanted to float the Clackamas. I would be wandering around town in a skirt looking for a place with outdoor eating and/or beer drinking. I would be finding a patch of grass to stretch out on, or a kiddie pool in which to soak and re-read a little Harry Potter.
Okay, in actuality I worked myself to the bone in Portland. Chances are I would not have the day off, and would probably be working a double at Macadam's, getting pissed off that yet another table with children was sat outside - serving outside sucks. [With that said, even if the service is a little slow, always tip your outside server 20%. Please. It sucks to leave the refrigerated bliss of the restaurant to schlep food to your outdoor table when the harder you work, the sweatier you get, and the more people that show up, the harder you work. And if you don't feel the capacity to tip 20%, maybe you should reconsider eating out in the first place. End preachiness.] Basically, I didn't have weekends in Oregon, not until maybe the end of my six years there. I miss it though, I miss the hot days and finding ways to cool off with my friends. I miss daylight until after 9 o'clock at night. For example, yesterday was the summer solstice - the longest day of the year - and sunrise in Portland today was 5:22am, sunset will be at 9:03pm. Winters can be a wet dog of a bitch, but 15 hours of daylight in the summer helps ease the pain. Thus I miss Portland.
It feels like summer. It is summer. Summer in the city: the sun is shining, the Muni buses are chirping. At least it's not Washington D.C., where the summers there were swampy and gross. I hear the fog rolls into San Francisco at the end of June and sits through the beginning of August. Mark Twain did say the coldest winter he had ever spent was a summer in San Francisco. But until the clouds roll in and the wind picks up I'm going to pretend summers in the city of San Francisco are always this awesome.
Where did I put that bathing suit...
