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OK, enough is enough. Living in Southern California we expect it to be warm in the summer, but this is ridiculous. The headline on a newspaper I saw the other day screamed, “Global warming did not cause scorcher!” As I stood there dripping with sweat I said to myself, now that’s some must read material.
After finishing the riveting piece of reporting, I found out that of the 12 degrees of extra heat that we are experiencing, that only one degree could actually be attributed to global warming. The rest is because of all of the extra development that has gone on during the last decade or so. More new multiple two story homes without yards, and pavement replacing one story homes with yards are to blame.
Well isn’t that just dandy. As if I needed another reason to hate all of the over development that I see destroying the communities I grew up in. As if watching the stomping grounds of my youth being filled up with condos and mini mansions wasn’t bad enough. Now every time I look at one of them through my steam-coated sunglasses in 107-degree heat I will have another reason to hate them even more. Like I needed one.
That little headline was just the topper of the three days of hell we all had just gone through during the last week. The use of the term hell in this instance is not only appropriate, it’s accurate. While there are always days when you mentally feel like you are in hell, rarely do you get the full experience of the environment imagined there. If the last few days were any indication, I may have to make some adjustments in my life just to hedge my bet of not ending up there.
Although if you are inclined to buy into Dante’s vision of the final circle of hell where Satan resides, you would find it frozen, not blazing. Sadly, despite the unpleasant company you would be surrounded with, I would have preferred it to the temperatures and temperaments I have experienced during the “Heat Wave ‘06” as the TV News channels are referring to it.
Just like with any weather change that we have here in So Cal, people seem to loose their minds. The second a drop of rain comes down the majority of our drivers forget how to drive and every news agency declares a “Storm Watch”. With this extreme heat, as soon as most people leave the comfort of their air-conditioned sanctuaries, they slowly begin to morph into irritable monsters.
Politeness and congeniality fly out the window or should I say evaporate? To add to the mix, everyone, in an effort to conserve energy and not over heat, goes into slow motion. Which to someone like me just adds to the heat irritation factor. If I have to go out, especially to a place that is air-conditioned challenged, like Home Depot, I don’t want to feel like I am driving through Monterey Park or Alhambra. In other words, keep moving!
I know it’s hot, trust me I know, but for god’s sake the sooner we both get our shopping done the sooner we can get back into a cooler zone. I am not just talking about the speed in which you walk. I’m also talking about the speed in which you go through the motions.
If you are paying by credit card or ATM, get that sucker out of your wallet and ready to use. And with the exception of the .99 Cent Store, where them seem to be stuck in some kind of computer time warp, you don’t have to wait until all of your items are scanned before you swipe your card. Get it done so the rest of us don’t have to stand there and watch you dig through the contents of your purse or wallet, then go through the motions.
This should be the rule of thumb in every day life but even more so when the twenty people behind you are foaming at the mouth and dripping with sweat. You might think I am exaggerating, but that was the picture of not just my line, it was also the picture of the other seven lines on this sweltering Saturday afternoon at my increasingly annoying Home Depot.
I say annoying because the slow motion patrons aside, the Mighty Depot’s computer system was not working properly. Instead of making all of us poor saps who were standing in line aware of the problem they instead let us stand like wet zombies until we got close enough to witness the problem. At that point you have invested so much time, your defenses are down and you have been whipped into submission by the heat and humidity.
The humidity has been the big part of this heat wave, something that in the past we here in the Southern part of the Golden State are not used to. Having visited Atlanta and Chicago in the summer months I became familiar with this then unknown to me weather condition. I hated it and could not understand how anyone could live in an area that experienced it on a yearly basis. Let’s just say I can handle the heat so much better when it isn’t so thick.
Combating this beast wasn’t made any easier by our friends at the Edison Company. Who, after charging us an additional 31% this year, was ill equipped to keep the power going in all areas despite the increase. And while I haven’t received my Edison bill yet this month, I have spoken to a couple of people who have. All I can tell you is get ready for a shock.
We here in the West are not the only ones that are in the frying pan, the entire nation is sizzling. With red being the preferred color by news stations and weathermen across the country for weeks now when they show the national forecast, you would think we were living in Russia. When they switch over to their high tech 3D Doppler radar to show the weather here in the Southland, it looks like the last JPL transmissions from Mars. In either case it is something that I have never seen before which makes me wonder whether or not the development excuse holds water for the entire nation.
The only people that I have not seen or heard bitching about the heat are my kids and their friends. Sure when it got really steamy this weekend they would hunker down in their air conditioned rooms, but the resiliency of youth didn’t prevent them from going out in the backyard for hours hanging out and playing pool and darts.
I am also amazed at how during this heat that both my son and daughter can, in the middle of the day, practice football and volleyball, respectively. They haven’t missed a practice and when I see them directly afterward neither one looks as though they are even hot. When I used to ask them if they were OK, thinking that they would be over heated or fried after basically working out in a sauna, they looked at me like I’m crazy or some kind of wimp. I’ve since stopped asking.
Maybe we adults were just raised in the wrong time to cope with the new global weather plan and our children will be the generation that mutates into a new higher form of heat resistant global dwellers.
Boy I think I really need to see that Al Gore documentary.
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