Heat Wave

So, I don't have air conditioning. Big surprise, you know, since I barely have heat in the winter: obviously I'm not going to have air conditioning either. Most of the time I'm okay with this - in fact, let's be honest, I'm downright obnoxious about it, since I like to make snarky comments about pollutants, and living the simple life, and other self satisfied Asheville hippie shit like that. It's great when poverty can make you snobbish and look, we poor people have to have something to feel superior about, besides our gas efficient compact beaters. Honestly, though, the lack of AC hasn't been all that bad, for two simple reasons: 1) more or less freezing to death every day last winter makes one realize just how precious and fleeting, not to mention cheap, 85 degree heat really is, and 2) I've been "working" at home for a year and thus, you see, I'm fully acclimated. A measly window fan feels fine to me and I pull a down comforter on at midnight when the temperature drops to 70.

That is, until today. Today I started my New Job, which I'm very pleased about and enjoying already, plus feeling useful and all that, and. . . get ready. . . it's air conditioned. It's so air conditioned, in fact, that I need a sweater and possibly some long johns and maybe a parka and a sherpa guide or two. All good, right? Finally, I get to experience how the other half, the air conditioned half, lives and works. No more sitting here sweating over a computer that overheats every 15 minutes, right? Yeah, right. Except it only took a day for me to lose my acclimitization, and now, sitting in the kitchen, this 89 degree heat feels like 103. I think this is what they mean by Heat Index - it's heat labeling for the air conditioning impaired, for those who are used to icy cold indoors and sweltering outdoors. It kind of bites. No wonder everyone has been complaining so loudly.