Weather or Not

If I come to your city, beware, the weather may just go haywire.

In summer 1995 I went camping in Maine. After spending hours meticulously waterproofing backpack, food, clothes, and buying rain gear, it did not rain the entire week, and the governor of Maine declared a drought emergency statewide.
In the spring of 1998, I traveled with a friend to Nashville. The two preceding days, two tornados blew through downtown Nashville, damaging several buildings and storefronts.

In 2001, Amie and I spent a week in Chicago. We spent one day biking along the lake, and in the process seeing the Art Institute, Shedd Aquarium and the Field Museum. It would turn out to be the hottest day of the year in Chicago, with temperatures topping 100 degrees.

In January 2003, we flew down to south Florida for my dad’s 75th birthday. We brought our summer clothes, bathing suits and sun block. That week Florida experienced record LOW temperatures, getting below 30 degrees at night and doing serious damage to several crops that year, virtually ruining the strawberry crop.

Fast forward to present. I am sitting in an air conditioned hotel room in downtown Seattle, where the temperature reached 102 today, a record for Seattle going back to the time they began keeping records! Where is my 82 degrees and sunny with a cool breeze coming off Puget Sound? The need to sit in Starbucks in the AM and sip a four-dollar cup of coffee to warm up? The necessity of bringing a light jacket with me at night? And there’s no relief in sight! It’s even been hard to see Mount Rainier, I guess because of steam coming off the water?

Is it global warming? The vagaries of nature? Coincidence? Or is it simply my presence? Hmmm…

Now, in other weather news, there is the whirlwind that has been my life the past few months. I sold my house and purchased a condominium in June, closed on both the sale and the purchase in the span of 16 hours (July 21 & 22), moved on July 22 (with much help from several friends), then took off to Chicago with three friends for an awesome weekend of Cubs, the EL, Goose Island Brewery and deep dish pizza. It was my second trip to Chicago, and to Wrigley Field, and my first time sitting in the world famous bleachers. What a party out there! The game is just an excuse to let loose. I also spent an evening in Evanston and got a grand tour of Northwestern University, before heading Monday to O’Hare en route to Seattle, where I have seen the Seattle Mariners at Safeco, the first Starbucks at Pike’s Place Market, buses that run through and pick up passengers in bus tunnels (cool!), and Microsoft -- well, really I just drove past Redmond -- no Bill Gates sighting to report.

I put the house up for sale at the end of May and sold it in three weeks! In this market, that was some feat, and a great blessing. I had nearly 15 showings, and all the while Daisy, my beagle, was recovering from her second leg surgery in three months. It was tough to take her out of the house for the showings because she had to be restricted while she recovered, and she is still under restriction.

And you would think things would slow down in August, right? Well, not really. A close friend from NYC is coming into town this Sunday to visit for a few days. Then, I am off to a music and worship conference in Maryland, then back for a wedding. After that, my worship band has an intense practice run leading up to a concert in the park we are playing at the end of August. And I am working on recording a collection of my own songs, which I hope to begin in the fall and release by year’s end.

Stay tuned for more weather updates.