"Do you always look forward to the longest day of the year and then miss it?

I always look forward to the longest day of the year and then miss it."

The Great Gatsby was also prominent on the reading lists of so many English classes between Grade 12 and 3rd year that I remember some of the dialogue, word for word, even after not reading it for at least 8 years.  On the list of novels I've reluctantly had to write papers on, I think it comes second only to Frankenstein*.

Through inadvertance, I have NOT missed out on the longest day of the year this time.  The Southwestern Ontario heatwave has both continued and intensified, and I have been keeping cool since about 8:30 (p.m.) by lounging on my kitchen porch in an anti-gravity chair and sipping beer**.

I recall that I never missed the longest day of the year when I lived in the Canadian Rockies.  How could anyone?  You could sit drinking on a patio in full daylight until 11 p.m.  And quite often see the Northern Lights after it got dark.

And an hour later:

Kind of awesome.

The drawbacks to the rest of the summer Canadian Rockies were:

• just because it was summer it didn't mean there was no snow.  I remember one year waking up on the 4th of July to a full-on blizzard
• crystal blue, gorgeous and inviting bodies of water were everywhere.  on really hot days, it was very difficult not to jump in.  jumping in would have spelled death by hypothermia in less than 5 minutes, however, as the rivers and lakes were all directly glacier-fed
• sunburns.  when you think of how far the earth is from the sun, you wouldn't think that getting 1700 metres closer to it would make a significant difference.  It really, really does.

But on to other matters.

Does alcohol metabolize differently in intense heat?  The bottle collection to my right suggests that I've had much more than necessary for a school night, but I'm not really feeling it at all. 

Scratch that.  I just Googled the metabolism of alcohol in hot weather and started giggling hysterically when the site I landed on included a pop-up that said "If you close this box, you will not see it again." 

I just remembered an awesome game that me and a former co-worker (still friend) used to play at work.  Chicken Breast.  We'd stand at opposite ends of our long tunnel of a photocopy room, stand up straight, our chests thrust forward, and walk swiftly towards each other and wait and see who would be the first to flinch and turn away before we bounced off of each other's breasts.  Why did I think of that?  Maybe because I was thinking about eggs.  Oh, good times.


*If you have not read The Great Gatsby, I suggest you do.  It's a great book.  My reluctance to write papers on it stems only from the fact that I actually quite liked it and grew tired of dissecting the symbolic meaning behind East Egg and West Egg.  Like the island of Manhattan stretches out like fallopian tubes and East and West Egg are the ovaries that you find at the end.  Though I never used that angle.  I don't remember it from any of the criticism, either. Maybe I've got a Master's thesis in the works. 

**My heels are digging into the outer corners of the frame of the anti-gravity chair like I'm in stirrups for a pap test or child-birthing.


I remember that I've promised a video montage, and a video montage I will provide.  Though I'm a technotard and am not making very good progress.  By video montage, I might mean PowerPoint.  That I can work with.