Day 45 – July 21, 2011 – We can dance if we want to…

Sorry Cookie Monster, in some places C is NOT for Cookie...

Number of days in Amsterdam – 45

Number of days without a bike theft – 41

Days since it last rained – 0

It continues to be cold and rainy here, but my thoughts are a few thousand miles away with my friends in Detroit. It seems that today marks one of the worst days of the ongoing heat wave. With temperatures up over 100ºF, and waves of rolling blackouts as the system just can’t handle the heat or everyone’s demand for AC.

Here, though, I can’t imagine what it’s like to be hot, or sweaty for that matter. Wet? That one we got down.

I was telling a coworker in the office about the heat wave back home, and I said “It’s up over 100º back home.”

Their response? “Is that hot? I don’t know what 100º even means.”

So I had to do the conversion and let them know that meant it was over 38ºC. They agreed, that was hot.

The F to C conversion is one I’ll never figure out, I fear.

Today, the Kitten was talking again. I can’t hear her, but Nicole can. She was asking for cookies.

I’m more than willing to help her out, but I don’t want to disappoint her. She’s just a baby, not even born yet, so I can’t really explain that I haven’t been here long enough to figure out which cookies are good, so I just had to wing it and hope for the best. I picked up two kinds – one a caramel cookie that was half-dipped in chocolate and the other a sort of shortbread with chocolate on one side. So far, she’s only tried the first kind, but Nicole let me know that the Kitten liked them very much.

Another thing that the Kitten loves are tacos. And thanks to the packets from home, we whipped up a batch of real American tacos tonight! The Kitten loved them very much, and many tacos suffered a gruesome fate this date, as we dispatched them with haste and efficiency.

We are victorious.

I’m actually pretty glad we’re not in Detroit right now, sweating it out and suffering from power outages. Nicole would be miserable, and my thoughts are with a good friend of ours who is very late in her pregnancy with twins. I hope she’s not too miserable.

Ready for a music flashback?

One thing I am bummed that we’ll miss is the chance to catch Men Without Hats at the Token Lounge in December. Men Without Hats play perfect 80s pop music, and we missed them at SXSW this year (although it was because we were hanging out with Bob Geldof, so I wouldn’t have traded it), but I found out that they’ll be in a small club in Detroit in September. That would be pretty sweet.

For now, though, I’ll just be happy that I’m not sweating my butt off. I’d rather be soaked from the rain than from a 100º 38º day.

If you go:

Pack for the weather you’re going to, not the weather you left. I’m seeing a ton of tourists walking around in shorts, shivering.