It has been hot here in Saint Louis for over a week.  We’ve enjoyed highs in the upper nineties and lows only down to the upper seventies.  Saturday was the last day of this heat wave, but not before it hit this year’s high temperature, ninety-eight degrees.  I shouldn’t complain about the weather.  We have air conditioning at home, at work and in the car.  Ninety-eight degrees is hot, but it is not record hot.  The record high for the day is one-hundred-four degrees.

Even that temperature is relatively cool compared to Saint Louis’ all time record high temperature of one-hundred-fifteen degrees.  That record was set on Bastille Day, July 14, 1954 and still stands.  In 1954 air conditioning was not all that prevalent.  You had to go to the movie theater in order to enjoy air conditioning.  The only thing that could make the heat worse would to be nine months pregnant.  So let’s recap, temperature of one-hundred-fifteen degrees, no air conditioning and nine months pregnant.  That would be Betty of course, pregnant with Amiee.

I got up early on Saturday and was out of the house by 6:15.  I passed the 6:20 running club at about that time, as we were all headed down Wydown, to the Park.  Wydown had under gone a resealing, but I rode on it anyway.  I saw another brood of Mallard ducklings.  I think it is a different brood then the one I saw and blogged about the day before because it was in a different part of the Park, about a half-mile away (two roads, one Muny and several waterfalls away) and this brood had sixteen ducklings, while the other Mallard brood only had fifteen.

Just to get out of the house, cabin fever and all that, we went to the theater in the afternoon, to go see the movie, Away We Go, a romantic comedy.  It stars John Krasinski (The Office) and Maya Rudolph (SNL), as Burt and Verona.  Maya (Verona) is pregnant.  Verona’s parents have passed and Burt’s parents are passing away to Antwerp.  What evolves is a road trip movie.  Burt and Verona hopscotch across the country visiting fellow siblings and old acquaintances.  What they find are negative examples of family life.  Burt and Verona careen from one hilarious, troubling or even soul searing encounter to the next.  Eventually, they recognize that even though they feel perpetually lost and screwed-up, in the grand scheme of things they are doing OK.

Anne and I went out to dinner at Houlihan’s last night.  We joined Dan and Annie and Annie’s folks, Paul and Sue, and Annie’s brother Tom there.  We all had a good time.