yellow skies

There's a rainbow arcing over the parking lot, perfectly steady as the wind rushes the trees. The atmosphere is unreal in color, a strangely intense yellow tinted with pink, much as it was at the end of the day in Cambridge, England. Today wasn't the first day of brilliant skies. Driving out to Batavia yesterday evening, Nicole and I swept through the most gorgeous New York scenery I'd ever seen, dotted with solitary barns and silos and lit by dramatic clouds of contrasting shapes and a fiery orb that looked ten times its normal size wrapped in clouds near the earth. On the way back, although we never encountered rain, we headed towards the most intense lightning storm I'd ever seen. I counted up to seven bolts per second, some that illuminated a quarter of the sky though eerily hidden behind clouds. Funny that I should have spent the summer talking about wanting to see a good lightning storm -- I got my wish without even getting wet!

Matilda and her boyfriend hosted a lovely party with varied guests -- composers, med school employees, a music ed instructor, and even a hamster. Nicole fell for the hamster immediately, and Jairo was positively a magician with it. It's good to have a slice of summer left to enjoy.

Today after Mex with Jeff and a surprisingly deft run at the carillon, I found myself in the Friends of Rush Rhees Library book sale, rifling through volumes ranging from 50¢ to $1.00. I must have unintentionally browsed for an hour, because suddenly a lady was handing out plastic bags for the final $3-per-bag clearance. I was beside myself in the mad rush to fill my bag. 17¢ per book later, I had a somewhat-full bag with treasures such as the Stinking Cookbook from my favorite SF restaurant (and straight off my wishlist to boot) to several volumes of poetry, literary history, art (including a massive hardcover volume of American art), Yale memorabilia, San Francisco memorabilia, almost-antiquarian mini-volumes in German, gifts... The literary bargain shopper's dream come true!

Pink is infusing the yellow light and this blog entry is coming to an end. As a contrasting last note I want to observe that the fashion for hoodies this summer has involved prints that are amusing because they don't work as prints. Said hoodies are also made of nearly useless thin material, and the only store that stocks properly warm zip hoodies seems to be the eternally overpriced A&F. It's infuriating to think that someone in Amsterdam is probably wearing my 5-year-old Urban Outfitters military hoodie with its fake medals and gloating. But maybe this book bargain is my payback.