Alone Away From Home.

I’ve been a little compulsive about weather.com this summer. When it gets over 90 I’m obsessed with knowing when the heat wave will be over (“Okay,” I tell myself, “It’s only 5 more days, you can bear it”), and then I become obsessed with knowing when the next one starts (“Breathe” I tell myself, “It’s just hot weather, it could be worse, it could be hot and you could be climbing on piles of garbage all day in the sun looking for things to sell for a few pennies so you could buy some rancid, bug-infested flour to mix with dirt and make crackers to feed your family”).

Something I’ve learned on weather.com is that in New York this summer we’re having basically the same weather that they’re having in Houston. Have you been to Houston? I have. I didn’t stay.

Speaking of Houston, yesterday I flew to Seattle from New York by way of Houston. It’s not exactly on the way. It was a long travel day, and when I got to my hotel at about 7 (10 New York time, which is late for me since I’ve been on this getting up at 5 a.m. to write schedule) I was beat. I had an overdone burger in the hotel restaurant, drove a half mile up the road to Trader Joe’s for a bottle of wine and some bananas for breakfast (the wine, obviously, was not for breakfast, the wine was for ... wine), came back to my room and tried to watch a little TV but couldn’t find anything interesting, so I went to sleep at 9:30 and slept till 8 this morning.

One of many wonderful things about visiting the Seattle area (the most obvious, of course, and the most welcome, being that it seems to be one of the few places in the U.S. this summer that isn’t broiling hot) is that the little coffee packets they give you in the hotel next to the 4-cup drip coffeemaker -- because some people need a cup of coffee so badly before they can summon the strength to even open the door and push the elevator button that they’ll drink just about anything hot and vaguely brownish -- actually makes a very good cup of coffee.

I’ve blogged so little lately, maybe I haven’t mentioned that I’m in Seattle for the next two weeks for a workshop production of Lizzie (new name, dropped the “Borden”) at the Village Theater. I say Seattle, but we’re actually in Issaquah, a charming hamlet just across a bridge over some body of water from Seattle. I guess you’d call it a suburb, a bedroom community. It feels more like a small town.

I miss C already and 2 weeks is a long time to be away, but it’s nice for him to have me out of the house for the Olympics, which he’s way more interested in watching than I am, and he's flying out for the weekend of the performances. I’m here a day earlier than Tim and Alan. I don’t know where along the way I became confused -- I thought everyone was coming out here on Friday. But I didn’t mind having an evening to myself. There’s something really nice about a night alone in a hotel away from home, where I can do whatever the fuck I want and no one will care. Even if it’s just to drink half a bottle of wine and crash at 9:30.