Summer, EDT

We landed in New York, JFK, on Wednesday evening. Remind me to relate sometime the story of the large model airplane that someone flew by remote control up to our jet’s altitude as we landed. We got our rental car and drove slowly to my bro’s place in Brooklyn and had a nice cookout with him and his wife and daughter on their rooftop patio. A true NYC experience.

Yesterday — Thursday — we drove across the ungainly mass of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, past Staten Island’s artificial mountains, and over the Outerbridge Crossing to New Jersey. It’s summer — Bahama high summer — here. The air so humid that it looks thick; even the sunlight is muddy. We visited with Kate’s mom and sister — indoors, where one can do more than just sweat — then drove out to Atlantic Highlands for a beer at an outdoor place next to the bridge that goes over to Sandy Hook. During dinner later, at a garish, bare little Italian place whose owner wanted to know all about the wine we brought to have with our pizza, a big thunderstorm came in from the west. As I said to Kate later, "That didn’t resolve anything." The night was muggy, hot and still after the rain passed.

Today: The same. Driving on one of the jughandled New Jersey four lanes with the windows open, I asked Kate if she was too hot. She said no. "I was just thinking of what Andre Gregory said in ‘My Dinner with Andre.’ ‘If you’re cold, don’t get under an electric blanket to feel an artificial blanket. What’s wrong with really feeling cold and having that experience of being really cold?’ So now I’m just having the experience of being hot and humid."

Me, too. Summer, Eastern Daylight Time. Not bad. Different from what I’ve gotten used to.