Downtown

We have just finished a sustained and powerful heat wave. Dad says it's only once in a few years you get one of these waves; temps had been over 90 (and sometimes up to 96!) for about a week! This will strike my more southern readers as average summer weather, but if you are unused to it and are living without air conditioning, it calls for some creativity to keep your good humor!

Downtown we went, where I'd heard there was a great fountain playground next to the Museum of Play. This fountain is an ice rink during the late fall and winter, where I used to skate (and where Leah memorably broke her poor elbow a few years ago). In July, it's a decoration only.

But we wandered up the hill and found the goods: Awesome fountain-based playground! See the sprayer on the left?

Half of this climbing octagon was being misted constantly.

We stayed for a couple hours and made sport of the heat wave!

On Tuesday evening, I took advantage of the communal living and sneaked out with some friends to see Shakespeare in the Bowl, a Rochester tradition. The glaciers had left a lot of drama in the WNYS landscape, see, and one of their gifts was a really gorgeous natural bowl with lovely acoustics! We have an amphitheater and look forward to performances and movies there all summer.

There's also a pretty sweet statue of Frederick Douglas. He gets to watch all the shows up close!

Miles took this picture of me and my lady-friends-since-high-school, just before the performance. Yes, I spoiled my kid and let him stay up way past bedtime to watch Shakespeare. He loved it so much that I can't find it in me to regret it.

It was so delightful to just enjoy the play, and take my academic hat off. They did a kind of 70s glam-rock interpretation (twin mohawks on Cesario/Sebastian!) that was a heck of a lot of fun. We were doused in bug spray, so the only bugs to distract me during our hours on the green were the fireflies. It was magic.

But that will be the last time that I carry Miles home from Highland Park. Oh, my back! I'll bring a stroller next time.