Summer!

Apparently it's summer. I remember, now, why I bought that air conditioner last year. It only hit 80ish today and it wasn't especially humid, but it was enough to make me feel sticky and lazy all evening.

Around 10:00 tonight it occurred to me that 1) I'd probably feel less completely unmotivated if it weren't so hot, 2) if I put my air conditioner back in the window, I could make it cooler, 3) putting the air conditioner back in would require a lot of effort, and 4) I really didn't feel like putting any effort into anything. I'm not entirely sure how I broke the loop, but the end result was that I have A/C again, and I have a little bit of motivation left over. So that's good... except for the noise, the power fluctuations when it turns on and off, and the impending doom of my electricity bill.

Before that, when I was still pretending it was cool out, I did the grand tour of my end of the Eastern Parkway. The first stop was the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, where I got in free courtesy of Bank of America. I've been meaning to visit it since I moved here, and the free-ness finally gave me an excuse to go spend a few hours there. It was bigger than I expected it to be, somehow, even though I'd seen it on a map. Lots of plants. Lots of flowers. They have a rose garden that opens June 1, which meant there were people crowding around its edges admiring the ones poking over and through the fence. I did, indeed, stop to smell the roses.

The next destination was the Brooklyn Museum, where I made my first visit since I bought a membership. The nice thing about being a member is I don't feel awkward about stopping in for half an hour to see one special exhibit, visiting the Rodins and a couple paintings up on the 5th floor, and then just walking out again. I should do it more often.

After that was the library. I should go there more often too, but I haven't had a whole lot of time to read lately, and when I do I've been going through the random books I've accumulated but never read. But I was walking past it, so I stopped in and got a couple things.

And then I walked through Prospect Park on my way home. It was full of people picnicing and playing frisbee and such, though not as much as I expected given that it's Memorial Day weekend. After the Botanic Garden, it looked much more open and much less constructed. And all of the plants didn't have little identifying tags.