19 July 2011

sit a while

You cannot be particularly picky, if you live in the Pacific Northwest, about the weather on your hiking days. You have to just pick a day and go hiking. The weather will do what it pleases.

When you go hiking in July, however, you expect... something. I guess you sort of expect, at the very least, that the day will clear up a little.

Or not, thanks to the weirdest July ever. The weather did not clear up, and I ended up hiking in puddles masquerading as shoes. Cold. Also wet. IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE SUMMER.

I sort of miss living in a place where it actually gets hot (ducks flying rotten tomatoes cast by all those who despise the heat and love this place for its lack of it). It's just, you see, that it is never actually warm enough to swim here, and I do like to swim.

After hiking to the point of being soggy and chilled through, people came over to my house.

I love this. I love that I have a house that is big enough to have people over and (generally) clean enough that I can invite them over on a whim.

I threw some cookies together, and I had mojito ingredients and par-baked bread, and people brought fruit salad and burgers, and it was just generally so nice to have people over, at my house, in my dining room, talking and eating.

One of the things that I forget, here in the US, is hospitality. It's much easier to invite people over when you live in a place where there are not so many restaurants and coffee shops and bars. Here, it is simplest just to meet someone out somewhere, but it's also less fun, because there is not the cooking and improvising and clattering about.

I need to remember how much fun it is to invite people over. In Rwanda, I would invite people over to stay a few nights, just because they didn't have a place to go. People would stop by to pick something up, and I would offer them a soda, and we'd sit a while. It was nice. I miss that.

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