HOT

This brutal, sweltering day was about survival. When I checked on-line at one point, it was 36 degrees, feeling, with the humidity, like 48. That's 48 degrees. Record-breaking - the hottest Toronto has ever been. Outside the front door was a radiating wall of heat - you had to push your way through. The air felt like fur, and it was hard to breathe, even for someone like me with good lungs. As I said - brutal.

And yet - on we go. For the first time in many months, I rented an AutoShare car this morning - it was a Honda hybrid, sleek and silent - and did errands, which included checking out computers at a Mac store on Queen St. East. MacZine, my beloved trusty MacBook, is on her last legs. Even as I type now, the cursor is jumping around with a mind of its own. Pages open and close, things vanish and scroll and move - perhaps she has been invaded by poltergeists. Or perhaps she's just five years old, with a crack in her side held together with scotch tape, and she has had it.

So, after much consultation with my personal genius Chuck, I have decided on a MacBook Pro. It's silver and black; that's all I need to know. AND it's available at a store that is not the Apple store at the Eaton Centre, where a thousand teenagers go to play, the noisiest, most chaotic store on the planet. I hate that store. So tomorrow, I'm going to a nice quiet shop and will return with a new computer. Be still, my beating heart.

And then I bought a ton of groceries, heavy or bulky things I can't carry on my bike, bird seed of course, kitty litter, laundry detergent ... So exciting, tooling around in an air-conditioned hybrid car, just like a grown-up. And then shoved my way through the air and came home. Spent the afternoon huddled, the AC blasting, every curtain and blind closed ... rushing out to water the plants, feed the birds and leave them a bowl of water, rush back inside. And read.

Jean-Marc and Richard called - off to the beach, hooray. Today we caught the 6.30 ferry; I had my bathing suit on under my dress, and as soon as we got to the beach, I rushed into the water. Absolute heaven. It was jam-packed, no surprise. We were on the "clothing optional" side this time - many people were clothed, many were naked, many in-between ... women in bottoms but not a top, men in t-shirts but no bottoms - and everyone else in the water. Richard and I walked along the beach, passing at one point two pretty young girls with beautiful breasts. When they came close, we could hear that one of them definitely used to be a man. In transition.

We ate a picnic of cold chicken, arugula salad and pinot grigio, watched the sunset again - hated to leave. Even just on the other side of the island, the air was a blanket. We were going to stop at the Asian Night Market on Cherry Street on the way home, a new open market of Chinese food open from 6 p.m. to midnight, but were too tired. We've got a date to go soon, however. As we rode across the Distillery's ancient cobblestones, a great blues band was playing to people sitting at a pub, outside in the dark.

Wonderful Toronto. Even in a heat wave.