It's no secret that this summer is one of the hottest ever recorded across the Northern Hemisphere. After 100+ temperatures for more than a week, we saw the mercury lessen to the 90s range here in the Bay Area, unfortunately coinciding with our trip to Boston, where upon our arrival, the East Coast chimed in with their own version of a sticky heat overload. With temperatures pushing 100 outside, I did my part to stay indoors at the convention hall, keeping my external wandering to a minimal level. But the heat was certainly noticed by many outside. Even every Conan O'Brien monologue that week started out with a lame joke about the heat...Now that we're back in the Bay Area, we're finding things a bit warm again. Not oppressively so, but enough that our fourth-floor condominium with cathedral ceilings, facing the sun, is storing more than its share of heat. And to make things worse, our housebound beagle, playing the part of a latchkey dog while we've been away at the office during the day, has been panting her way through the eight or so hours, without respite.
Yesterday evening, after arriving home from the A's game, the indoors temperature was a balmy 88, so I of course started up the fans and air conditioner in a feeble attempt to knock down the thermometer a few points. Hours later, we were still at 85, and we didn't seem to be getting anywhere. To my chagrin, I then noticed the air nozzle aimed to push hot air out of the house had detached from the window, and instead of cooling us off, we had started a circle of heat pouring right back into the room we were trying to chill. Dumb, dumb, dumb.Needless to say, we reattached it, and immediately saw a drop - never perfect, mind you, but a slip from 85 to 82, to 80, and just over 75 by midnight or so. The dog, patient through all this, lifted her eyebrows at me as if she had known, but in all seriousness, if she saw something, she could have told me, rather than keeping it to herself.
Today's been a bit better - but not great. As of 7 this evening, we're at 80 indoors, down from 85 when we started, and as seen in An Inconvenient Truth, this will become more normal as time goes on if we don't make changes in our activity to thwart the gradual warming of the planet. Our dog may not be around to see it, but we will be.
Listening to ''No Reason", by Chumi DJ (Play Count: 5)