Hot As Blazes

I wonder how many times I'll have to write about how hot it's getting. I know I mentioned it a couple of months ago when temperatures climbed into the 80s. Now it's really blazing, with highs in the upper 90's. From what I hear, we still have a couple months of well over 100 degrees to look forward to, so I'm sure I'll mention it again. I had a particularly bad experience yesterday, when the vehicle I got into turned out not to have any windows in the back or air-conditioning. It was like riding home in an oven. From now on I'm sticking to the numbered taxis and marshrutkas - which are smaller and have rear windows.

The one thing the hot weather seems to be good for is our garden, which is rapidly growing. We had our first zucchini and nasturtium last night for dinner. The zucchini were kind of small, but tasty and there are more growing. Hopefully within another month, the rest of the plants will have caught up since they got a later start.

Today we actually had rain for the first time in a couple weeks,(the summer drought is setting in), and the accompanying cloud cover gave a nice respite from the heat. I was also serenaded by a remix of 'Last Christmas' by Wham!, which was about as incongruous as it could possibly be at this time of year in this part of the world. In fact, our lack of car is exposing us to all sorts of interesting cars. The other morning, stephanie came with me to the gym in the morning and we road in a bronze car with the interior covered in a material that looked like an orange bath towel.

Work is busier than usual as we approach the 4th of July extravaganza, and finished negotiations on the embassy gardening contract, but we have two long weekends in a row to ease the pain. This weekend we are heading off for an adventure in the mountains - which will hopefully be much cooler.