A Seattle summer, at last.

This place is flatter than three week old soda.

The weather has been so miserable since moving in--high temperatures, high humidity, followed by the occasional thunder, lightning, and rain--that I found myself mildly surprised at the recent turn of events. The skies have cleared and the mercury has finally dropped enough for a sane person to want to sit outside for a while.

With that, I actually ventured outside for a time today--walking along the shore when the tide went out and catching up on reading under the shade of a tree with my dog friend, Lola.

Lola has no problem wandering into our house, looking (really, searching) for some food handouts.

Between the cool breeze, warm sun interspersed with some clouds to keep things from getting too hot, it felt like the Seattle summer I never got to experience. Except for the bugs. Oh god, the bugs. All the various bugs that enjoy the taste of human flesh and blood.

In the three odd hours that I spent outside--one hour wandering in the water and two hours just sitting outside on my porch--I got bitten five times. Five big swelling bites. And since I've been in the South, it happens nearly every time I spend more than 30 minutes outside. I've been bitten so often that I've gone through half of an one-ounce tube of hydrocortisone that I bought about a month and a half ago. When I lived in Seattle, the same sized tube would last me so long it would expire before I got through a quarter of it.

But I'm whining and I should really stop. Just as when the cloudy days finally gave way to sunny days in Seattle, I really need to take advantage of the times when heat and humidity give way to crisp fall air--bug bites be damned.  Or I could just be more militant about putting on bug spray and arming myself with a fly swatter and citronella candle wherever I go, waging an all out one-person war against any bug that may attempt to make me its lunch.