broiled
monday, july 1, 2002


someone turn down the heat! it is just too damn hot, and it's only early july. by mid july i expect people to be dropping like flies, particularly the sick and the elderly. by august, there ought to be a lot of available land in california because we'll all have fried.

i just knew it was going to be a doozy of a summer back in may when we were already hitting the 80s. the 80s in may is NOT a good sign when it comes to what summer will look like. to make things worse, we have a swamp cooler. for those who have no idea what that is, it is a kind of air conditioner (supposedly) that uses water to attempt to cool things off. it does work to a degree, but it also makes things humid, sort of negating a lot of the cooling effect it aims for. and our swamp cooler is a pos. i have to turn it on at like 4 am for it to do anything and even then it's still almost worthless by noon. we have to turn on 2 extra fans in the house just to survive the afternoon. and while not much is said about the california energy crises, i can already tell you that prices have NOT gone down. this summer is going to be expensive.

i'm also not managing to focus well in this heat. i do ok at night, but i might as well sleep through the day for all the work i manage to get done. (ok, so i do give that one a damn good try. it just gets to hot to sleep past 1 in the afternoon...)

on top of this, my oldest walks home during the hottest part of the day and my husband is looking for work all day in this heat. the heat doesn't help the smog levels either. or the lack of wind in our area.

it does seem to help the noise levels, though. the neighborhood kids don't start playing with the fireworks until around 5 or so...