So what, Chicago now has a rainy season? And it’s in September – September, the month that should be full of warm days and gently cool nights, sun and partial clouds, the last taste of summer before heading back to school? (Well, if you attend the University of Chicago, that is, and classes don’t begin ’til nearly October.)
I have been cooped up for three days already and now, maybe a fourth. No more romanticizing about the rain anymore. I was thoroughly duped yesterday: it had been calm for awhile. I went out. I bought a huge number of books at the Seminary Coop, thinking I had a one-up on folks who would have to stand in the crazy lines in the upcoming weeks. And I finally found a copy of the Brothers Karamazov which I really liked; I had intended to read it over this break. “Hey, if it keeps raining, this will be perfect, I thought.” But no, it won’t. I exited the Seminary Coop, and it was lightly raining; no big deal, right? But by the time I’m nearing 57th and Stony, it’s gently DOWNPOURING. I wait for some 15 minutes under the overpass there, and finally just decide to dash the last stretch home. I had checked; at that point, my books seemed to be safely dry inside my backpack. But if I kept a photojournal blog, right now you’d be seeing pictures of a drying rack full of my soaked cloths, pictures of some dozen theological ethics and philosophy of religion books spread out on a table, with the desperate hope that I could somehow dry their waterlogged edges (the rain didn’t come into the top of my bag; it somehow seeped into the bottom, and as I stood waiting in the dryness of the overpass, the bottom portions of my books were just getting wetter, and wetter…) and a photo of a thoroughly soaked copy of the Brothers Karamazov, definitely the book that suffered the most damage out of all of them.
I may as well be working. I’ve just been staring out at grayness for days anyhow… fading into a distant memory now are thoughts of my trip to the Lincoln Park Zoo in the sunny, breezy weather of last Friday, the happy carelessness of the ducks on the lake, the thoughtful smile of DeBrazza’s monkey, which I watched for a long while (if you follow the link, the DeBrazza is the monkey hanging out with the pygmy marmoset). (And yes, I failed to blog about this. I wrote about my other adventures first, and failed to get to the zoo.)
Also note that while it rained all through last night, the thunder was loud enough that it kept setting off the alarm to one of our neighbors’ cars. I’d wake up with a jolt from the booming thunder-clap, and then suddenly there’d be this profusion of noise, as this alarm is one of those that seems to be a combination of the horn, some other bells/whistles noises, and then the repeating “whooo-ooop!” As though really, it were not an electronic device guarding the car, but an entire clown posse. (But I know no right-minded clown would take such a job. Because they would have been completely drenched.)
Curses, I say. CURSES.
