Thursday, August 28, 2008

Battle of the Bulge, part one - the Goal.

OK, so this may be an unpopular, unsubstantiated and possibly ludicrous concept, but I’m here to tell it: big, chunky girls don’t get the lovin. They just don’t. And by “they” I am really saying “we” because people, I am currently both big and also inordinately chunky.

Unfortunately I also have some handicaps that make it tough to combat this situation. For instance, I really hate to exercise. Hate it so much that I think my hatred actually does burn calories. Also, I really love to eat food, and especially those things a) deep fried, b) covered in chocolate or c) made entirely of fat. God bless the inventor of the deep fried Snickers bar – I think I love you the most, Scarecrow!

(gurgle, gurgle, drooly love of deep fried Snickers bar…) Sorry, where was I?

Oh, right. Lovin’.

So The Queen is a motivated type. She does things like run marathons and try to push a person through her cooch for something like 62 hours. Give her a challenge and watch her CONQUER. A year ago she had a baby, which lead to some surplus or bonus bodyness, some of which is still hanging around. When she heard that I sometimes sit on my couch and run through my head all the things that my poochy tummy is larger than (loaf of bread, copy of Moby Dick, child’s bowling ball…) she was struck by motivated genius and she came up with our Battle of the Bulge.

The first version of the Battle of the Bulge was just us competing for who could spend more time each day doing something exercisey. Like for me it was biking in to the office twice a day or taking walks or lying on the grass imagining what I could look like skinny. That burns more pounds than you’d guess. For her it was things like going for a run at the break of dawn or taking the kids to the park and chasing them around for an hour. Probably not once did she do any cardio-imagining. She’s hard-core.

But now we’re kicking it up a notch. And this next step required that I do something that I NEVER, EVER DO. This silver-tongued devil, this Svengali, she talked me into STEPPING ON A SCALE! ONE THAT TELLS YOU HOW MUCH YOU ACTUALLY WEIGH! OH, THE HUMANITY!!! As a rule I never step on scales and, in fact, I have not seen/known my own weight for over a decade, on account of I think people completely obsess about The Number. The Number. The Damn Number! But The Queen had a plan, and the plan really did demand a benchmark. And that benchmark really needed to be our terrible, terrible weight. Sigh. So weigh me she did, and she looked at the number and wrote it down and I averted my eyes and stuck my fingers in my ears and went “La, la, la, la, I can’t HEAR you, can’t HEAR you!” (just in case, when she saw the actual number, she spontaneously let loose with a “Great Googly-Moogly, I didn’t even know the scale WENT that high!”)

So between now and the end of November she and I are going to do whatever it is we’re going to do and see which of us can lose more weight. We’ll weigh each week (and by “we’ll weight” I really mean “I’ll get back on her big, dumb scale and she’ll write down a number”) and the winner will get some kind of CASH PRIZE. If I’m the big winner I’ll be spending that money on cases of deep-friend Snickers bars. And a dainty little chocolate covered, deep fried trophy. Whee!

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Big Fail, part 2 -- the Punishment

Here, for your reading enjoyment, is the email conversation with The Queen which followed the blog post about my epic fail with Big City Guy. It started with my assertion that the Queen would never have let me leave that room w/out at least a sweaty-palmed handshake and a “Dude, you were super!”, to which she left a comment.

Q: So true! Consider yourself tskd, tskd!

F:
I even considered going back on Saturday night for the last performance, and subsequent last night reception, but I was so pooped from wandering around the county fair and I'm sure I looked like deep-fried ass, so I didn't. And thus my one and only chance for love was forever lost. I'll be headed to humane society to adopt my required additional 35 cats this weekend. Sigh.

Q:
I think we should come up with some sort of penalty for you when you are in these situations and you don't take advantage of them. yeah, I'm liking that idea...

F:
What KIND of penalty? Isn't letting the love of my life get away enough of a penalty? (notice the overly dramatic words here -- I'm definitely appealing to your romantic dime novels side.)

Q:
Well apparently not since you let him get away without so much as a "hellomynameisfemtasticIloveyou."

…I ask you, oh best beloveds of the Internets Super-Highway of information, do you think I need a penalty for my epic fails? If so, what KIND of penalty? I’ll get the ball rolling: what about I am forced to eat a heaping bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream every time? THAT would sure show me! Your thoughts please?

Friday, August 22, 2008

too busy for ANYTHING.

Well, it’s official. I’m officially old. And I hate it, not because I’m opposed to being old or old people or that people get old, but because it’s limiting things that used to be limitless. Like my energy, and my time and my ability to do things with little or no sleep. Somewhere along the line I’ve become this weak, sad, sleep-needing person! (note: if you have always been a sleep-needing person I apologize for characterizing you as weak or sad. I’m just not used to it. And it’s making me cranky. I’m sure you’re wonderful and strong and I promise to bring to you the next pickle jar I cannot open…)

Background info: I work for a Medical Group (which is basically a big pile of doctors who have office hours and see patients for that which ails them). This Medical Group is part of a larger healthcare organization which also manages our sister/neighbor/good friend hospital (which is basically a bigger pile of doctors who have shifts and see anybody who crosses their medical path for that which SERIOUSLY ails them). The hospital just moved into a newer, bigger, super-StarTrekish-hightech building and it was a BIG DEAL in Hippyville! And because we’re related anyone who works for the Medical Group was helping out with the big move.

OK, so last week was the actual move and the first week in the new, fancy digs. And I have to tell you, there are so many cool things about this new building! Twice before I’ve started to write a post waxing geeksodic (it’s a word now – tell your friends) about all the cool things! Like for instance there are these big screens which can tell you where any patient is in the whole hospital based on their ID badges and sensors in the ceilings! I want to say “computer, where is ensign LaForge?” so it can tell me that he’s left the ship and is on the planet’s surface. Also we have NEUMATIC TUBES! Tubes that run for MILES all over the building and even to a near-by LAB BUILDING, running under the streets magically! Tubes in which you can put papers or lab samples or gloves or whatever you want and hit “send” and they’ll shoot away, popping up as if by magic in another place with a satisfy “Hshhhhh-THUNK!” Really, its just a great big pile of very cool toys that I wish I could play with.

In an effort to be helpful to the sister hospital I volunteered for a “phone coaching” shift last Tuesday from 6pm to 6am. Yes, that’s a 12-hour shift. Yes, that’s an overnight shift. The idea was that the new, fancy, SUPER-COOL phones are very different from what the doctors and nursing staff are used to, and while doctors and nurses are extremely smart about what things you can and cannot do with human bodies, they are often not technically savvy folks. There was a fear that someone would run into confusion w/ the new phones while trying to yank a poor soul from the jaws of death and would LOSE THEIR SH*T if they suddenly had to grab a phone manual to make a damned call. Hence we phone coaches, who were mostly charged with “being around” to help folks w/ the phones if they needed it at any time. But for me it was mostly “wander around the ICU all night long, while nothing happened and nobody called anybody or got called by anybody. And eat Red Vines.” In order to “work” this shift I left my normal job at lunchtime and tried to nap for a couple of hours, but mostly I was up and working from 7am on Monday until about 7am on Tuesday.

But here (at last!) is the point of my rant: Time was (and has always been!) that I could have been up for 24 hours with no problems. NO PROBLEMS! “24 hours of being up? Bring it on!” I would have said. “Heck, while I’m at it I might as well stay up for 36 hours! It’s only another 12 hours!” Sleep, I figured, was for the sleepy and/or dead, and you can always get more sleep later. I don’t do skateboarding or skiing or anything, but was all about the EXTREEEEEME WORKING! And so off I went for my shift and I coached and I worked and the sun set and slept and rose and I finished and went home. By which I mean I got behind the wheel of my car and only fell asleep at 2 stoplights and only once forgot that I was DRIVING A 2-TON VEHICLE!, and finally got home and fell over dead on the couch and slept for about 4 hours. And then I was all good and got up and felt no ill effects and everything was just fine!

HA!!

I woke up after 4 hours and tried to eat, but instead napped a little. I showered and did a little work from home, but was attacked by another nap from out of nowhere. In the space of 12 hours I took something like 5 spontaneous naps. I felt like a narcoleptic, too afraid to operate heavy machinery because I didn’t know when the next attack-nap would strike. But hey, even that was ok, because at least at the end of the day I went to bed and slept like I would generally sleep and everything went back to normal.

HA AGAIN!!!

I’ve been sleepy and off-kilter ever since. It took several days for the attack-naps to back off completely. I slept in on Saturday until past 11am. And even this week I’ve felt like I’m walking through flaming oatmeal here, unable to get back up to speed and running on all cylinders. And my stomach, probably feeling left out of all the fun, has been throwing the occasional tantrum where food turns to poisonous gas in my stomach. Any food. Even safe food. With no rhyme or reason.

Oh, and it’s also apparently made me very whiney. See this post as “exhibit A”.

Because I’ve been so out of sorts, which I blame on my oldness and new inability to handle EXTREEEEEME WORK, I’ve been too busy for my life all this week. Work is piling up all over me. I’m working tons of extra hours, and still can never reach the end of the “to do” list. My personal life is a shambles, both because of all the work hours and the other stuff that has cropped up. (soon I will post for you the story of Chester, the Sad and Abandoned Kitty of Sadness and Woe. Watch for it.) So busy am I that I have not posted in almost a week! So busy am I that I haven’t emailed to the Queen ALL WEEK! Normally a daily thing, and yet silent has I been! She probably thinks I’m dead or in a coma or a Jehovah’s Witness or something!

Today is Friday. I’m going to get to the top of my pile IF IT KILLS ME! And from there I will be able to see everything and get a handle on it all and GET MY LIFE BACK! And BE LESS OLD!! (and STOP TYPING THINGS IN ALL CAPS!!!)

Friday, August 15, 2008

Big Fail.

I went to see a local performance of Brigadoon tonight-

What. Yes, I like musicals. Shut up.

-and it was a pretty good performance over all. One reason to go was we (my parents and the favorite aunt) knew the dude who had the lead. He’s one of those people I don’t know very well, but I maintain my connection with him because eventually I’ll get to write the blog post about how I once coached the famous Dude McFamousy in his high school Improv troupe! Back when he wasn't so very, very, terribly and muchly famous! And also la-de-frickin’-da! And McFamousy was excellent, as he always, always is, but there was another guy (playing second banana character Jeff) who was even better. A super-talented actor. Really stood out from the whole cast.

Plus he was CUTE.

I check the bio in the program and lo, he is new in town! Also he’s all sorts of experienced, coming from some Big Cities of fame and reknown! Places where everyone is cute like that!

And he dedicated his performance. To. His. Mother. How fabulous is that? (and yes, I noticed that he did NOT dedicate his performance to any wives or girlfriends. This is also fabulous.)

So me, I’m smitten. And after the performance there’s this reception in the basement, full to overflowing w/ people in sweaty make-up and plaid. (Brigadoon, people.) My Dad wants to give the big hand shake to the family connection (aka Dude McFamousy) but I’m sneakily and trixily scanning the room for Second Banana from the Big City. Because since curtain call I’ve had this fantasy running in my head.

In the fantasy I go over and introduce myself to Big City guy and tell him how I think he stole the show and also I see you’re from , which is a great town and how are you liking Hippyville? And he perks up, because I know his Big City, and tells me how it’s been great, but he does miss the comedy and improv scene from his Big City. And that’s when I mention my Improv history, which will impress him (because usually girls aren’t both funny and fabulously fetching, like me) and we’ll strike up a conversation.

A conversation where I am both radiant and also witty. Charming but fascinating. I talk about shows I love and he loves them too, because we’re SO on the same page. We both love the comedy of Mitch Hedberg and think that Mencia is overrated. We enjoy a good book, but really indulge in comic books, especially from Dark Horse. He’s a Coke drinker, but I find that forgivable because I’m magnanimous like that. Oh, there are sparks, people! Sparks and chemistry and it’s the beginning of something…

Magical.

But in the REAL world, here’s me with my Mom and Dad and favorite Aunt. Because hitting the town with your older relatives is SO hot! And I’m standing across the room staring at this guy, but making absolutely no move to bridge the gap. The huge, mammoth, deep and wide and impassable gap that I cannot pass because lo! Impassable!

Plus the lame, paranoid and self conscious side of me arrives (she also likes musicals and requests that you shut up) to ask questions like "who's the girl standing next to her? Is that his date? Is that someone in the cast? Is it someone in the cast who wants to date him? Did she just touch his arm? I will KEEEELL her! Wait, did he just look at that guy's chest? Oh hell, is he gay? I can't feel my arm, because the love of my life is GAY! AGAIN! No, wait, he's just reading his shirt. Why didn't I wear a funny shirt? Do guys like girls who wear funny shirts? SHE TOUCHED HIS ARM AGAIN! KEEEELL HER!"

I’ve got a window of maybe 5 to 10 minutes maximum and I’m just standing by the pretzels, feeling the room fill up with uncomfortable, failure-flavored molasses.

And finally my Dad has had the Big Handshake w/ Dude McFamousy and I gotta leave because they’re my ride. They’re my ride! So hot! Guh. Goodbye to Big City guy, and to my life of talking theater and travel and how long we’ve waited for each other in this big, lonely world.

BIG FAIL.

This, my peoples, is why I really need to never go anywhere without the Queen ever again. She would never have let me leave that room w/out at least a sweaty-palmed handshake and a "Dude, you were super!"

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

My Summer Vacation of MUCH KNOWLEDGE, part 2

When last we saw our hero (which is ME) she was taking a trip from Hippyville down to sunny (sunny, oh so very terribly and tragically sunny, please make the sunny stop) Palm Springs, CA. And this trip was full of knowledge. And now the hero (again, ME) is sharing the knowledge with her bestest internet friends. (which is YOU)

We covered knowledges 1 through 50 in the last post. Now we start this with knowledge number 51! Go, go, trippy knowledge!

51. Billboard seen driving down the street in Palm Springs: "If you must curse, use your own name. -god"
52. There are places along the San Adreas fault line where the earth has cracked open from earthquakiness
53. Along these lines there are these "natural oasis" where water comes up through the ground as if by magic
54. Because of the magical water-features there are also trees! Springing miraculously from the ground! All green and supernatural!
55. This happens in Hippyville too. Only it happens pretty much everywhere. And it's not considered magical at all.
56. It's also why we don't mind the rain here so much. Because rain = GREEN
57. There are actually douchebags in the world lame enough to smoke IN A SWIMMING POOL.
58. Glaring at these douchebags for a really long time, while psychically sending them the message “you are a great, big douchebag and should put out the cigarette that you just almost stuck into that little kid’s eye as he swam past. You douchebag.” doesn’t actually do anything.
59. However there’s no greater rush of pride than when your 12-yr old niece turns to you and says “Man, those people are such idiots.” Before she swims away. (tears of pride welling up at the memory.)
60. Except maybe when your 10-yr old nephew does a cannonball right by previously mentioned smoking tools, thereby putting out one of the cigarettes. (ok, seriously proud tears now.)
61. kids still play duck, duck, goose!
62. But now it’s EXTREME duck, duck, goose, where they run and run and RUN until the millisecond before they get tagged, and only THEN do they sit.
63. Watching EXTREME duck, duck, goose is exhausting. Especially when you remember that they’re running around in 114 degree temperatures.
64. European teenagers are just as full of youthful angst as their US counterparts,
65. and the only way to exercise the European angst is to go online
66. at any hour of the day and night
67. no matter how many other, non-angsty people are waiting for 5 minutes to check their email or WRITE A BLOG POST ABOUT HOW DANGED HOT IT IS!
68. Palm Springs was named after natural hot water springs that the local Indian tribes used for bathing and spiritual ceremonies. (no really!)
69. Not surprisingly, it was only a matter of time before The Man came along and tried to take away the springs.
70. Today those same springs are the center of a great big resort and spa and casino, run by a local Indian tribe and totally raking in the dough from crazy white people.
71. Because sometimes there is a certain amount of justice in the universe.
72. If there isn’t enough wind blowing the fields of wind generators won’t spin
73. This is a strangely spooky sight to behold
74. Great, huge schools of sardines gathering in the ocean off the coast of Santa Cruz begats great, huge flocks of pelicans on the beaches of, and in the skies over, Santa Cruz.
75. A sardine-rich pelican is a happy pelican. (but still goofy-lookin’)
76. The more exhausted you are when you arrive at your latest Motel 6, the more floors you’ll have to climb to reach your room.
77. If you book a Motel 6 room with two beds, even if you tell them it’s for three people, you will have only 2 towels.
78. and one washcloth.
79. However a screen over your large, 3rd-floor window is optional.
80. as is the complimentary fall to your death.
81. Never, ever, ever try to park on the street on the waterfront in San Francisco.
82. The meters charge a quarter for every 6 minutes!…
83. …and the maximum time you can buy is 1 hour…
84. …which is about how long it takes to find a nearby store willing to sell you enough quarters for another hour of time.
85. Segue tours around San Francisco seem like a very cool idea!
86. right up until you’re stuck driving behind them, moving down the street at roughly 4 miles per hour.
87. There are crazy people who voluntarily swim in the San Francisco bay, which is usually about 58 degrees.
88. No matter how hot you are the day before (even if you’re, say, 114 degrees?) this will still not seem like a refreshing idea as you see them go swimming by.
89. It helps a little if you imagine that they’ve escaped Alcatraz (behind you) and are making a mad, swimmy dash for Ghiradelli’s chocolate salvation.
90. Sea Lions are STINKIN’ FUN to watch.
91. Way more fun than watching a street magician hammer a nail into his nose.
92. Even if the magician was careful to clean that nail in alcohol before the hammering began.
93. If you are ever in Redding, CA, be sure to check out the Sundial Bridge at Turtle Bay Exploration Center!
94. A very effective way to keep someone from taking a sneaky, and urgently needed, tinkle behind your building after hours is to post a sign reading “Rattlesnake Habitat”
95. no actual rattlesnakes are required for this to be effective.
96. There’s no such thing as “too many pictures of an outrageous sunset.”
97. It’s important to remember, if you decide to sleep in one morning, that McDonalds stops selling Bacon, Egg and Cheese Biscuits PROMPTLY at 10:30am on Wednesdays.
98. Also an order of Carl’s Jr. criss-cut fries is not at all the same thing as an order of McDonalds hash browns, no matter how much you try.
99. Calico kitties hold a GRUDGE if you leave them for a week, no matter how cool the house sitter.
100. THERE IS NO PLACE LIKE HOME.

Thus endeth the knowledge acquired from this trip. I hope you found it as educational as it was obsessed with crazy-hot temperatures. Now enjoy this sunset picture, number 26 out of 47. (because you can't take too many pictures of an outrageous sunset...)

Saturday, August 09, 2008

Just when you thought I was done being amazed at Palm Springs heat...

Since I was gone for so long I figure I should tell you something about my trip, but I don’t want to create the blog-equivalent of “hey, come over and see the 3-hour slideshow of pictures of trees I took while touring Vermont!” As such, I will do it thusly:

100 Things I learned while on a 1-week trip from Hippyville to Palm Springs for a family reunion.
OR
“what I did on my family vacation. By Femtastic.”
(OR “No WONDER August is the off-season time to visit Palm Springs. KILL ME!”)

1. if you set fire to a big chunk of a State, suck as California for instance, it makes everything super-smoky. I recommend against it.
2. You can’t really take cool pictures of things zinging by your car window while driving down the freeway. You can take pictures of the place that was cool three seconds before. It’s not the same
3. All firefighters are hot (no pun intended).
4. when you drive through California in the summer you’ll encounter packs of wild, roaming firefighters in every fast food joint you visit.
5. if they get there right before you do you’re going to have a long wait until you get to order
6. but at least you’ll have something nice to look at while you wait.
7. It sucks that there are no Sonic restaurants in Hippyville
8. but it’s very stupid that there are so many in California
9. because it’s so hot there that everyone has to sit there in their CARS with their AIR CONDITIONING RUNNING while they eat their food!
10. The milk shake was still super-fabulous, even with the side-order of guilt
11. When a fancy resort is charging the same amount for a night as a Stockton Motel 6 you know you’re there during the “off season”
12. this is your first clue that you should flee immediately
13. If you throw a street fair in Palm Springs in August you should start it at about 7pm, when the sun goes down
14. even though it’s still approximately 102 degrees
15. the booths, at such a street fair, who are selling hot Mexican food and burgers and kabobs will do decent business
16. but that’s nothing compared to the one guy selling fruity icees, who will have a line roughly 6 blocks long
17. which you will gladly stand in as long as there is cold, slushy, lemony drink goodness at the other end!
18. it’s impossible to tell which is a more sure sign of madness: that the strange street performer is a rock violinist with his own flashing lights and wind machine
19. or that his costume covers neck to toes, (in 102 degree heat, people!) with some suit-of-armor accents. (wind machine, by the way, is key)
20. either way, nobody is going to buy his CDs, but they will take their pictures standing right in front of him, which is tourist for “Dude, I think you’re totally wackadoo!”
21. if you step into a swimming pool at 9pm and the water is just as hot as the air, which is about 99 degrees, it’s completely appropriate to cry a little. Nobody will judge you.
22. it is not possible to turn your hotel room’s air conditioning up too much if the outside is still gonna be “I hate it here so much” hot at 3am.
23. people crazy enough to live in Palm Springs also think it’s reasonable to get up at 4:30am every day. To avoid the heat
24. even though it’s still hot at 4:30am, and even hotter by 5am
25. As such, all the bars close down around 11am because everyone goes to bed at 8:30pm.
26. you’d think that someplace that hot wouldn’t bother with outdoor seating at their restaurants, but you’d be wrong.
27. instead all the outdoor seating has fancy little misters over the heads of the guests, spraying a fine, and constant, cool ‘pffffsssstttt’ of water.
28. all outdoor seated eaters end up damp, either because the misters aren’t reaching them, and therefore the exertion of just sitting and eating have worked up a huge sweat that’s soaked their clothing OR
29. they misters are reaching them, and gently watering them like a bag of carrots at the supermarket.
30. either way you end up the same way: hot, wet and cranky. Check please!
31. Apparently your 12-pack of soda cans will explode both if they’re left in a very cold box, like a freezer, OR if they’re left in a very hot box.
32. like the trunk of a rental car
33. rental car places do not check the trunk for mysteriously sticky carpets when you return the car.
34. A can of Pepsi that has spent 2 days in the uber-hot trunk of a rental Honda is still pretty tasty, once you can get the bulging top open.
35. it takes more than 5 days to stop being constantly amazed at how hot it is in Palm Springs in August.
36. Nobody is too cool to have a monkey bank. Monkey banks are just that cool.
37. apparently my fear of heights is exceeded by my hatred of abundant heat
38. as I was motivated to take a dangly little tram car, suspended over a terrible drop of death, up to the top of a mountain by the promise of a 30+ degree drop in temperature.
39. sun screen comes in spf 70.
40. Which is the lotion equivalent of a flannel shirt
41. and feels like your coating yourself in a fine layer of cream cheese
42. but works super-good for keeping out the sun. (although next time I might just try using cream cheese.)
43. Some palm trees grow with ladders on their trunks and bags wrapped around their fruits
44. sometimes the fruits hanging off of palm trees are “dates”
45. an educational movie about how dates reproduce can be way more naughty than you might think.
46. according to the good people at Shields Date farms, there is no natural way for the male date to pollinate the female date, so the farmers do it by hand.
47. except then how did they ever exist in the first place?
48. no, I don’t think this is where the concept of 2 people “dating” originally came from
49. at the same time, I will forever think of the date mating video if ever I “date” again.
50. date shakes taste way better then you’d think they would, seeing as the actual fruit looks like shiny poop.

...it's late, I have to get up much too early tomorrow morning and I have a movie to finish, so I'll post this first half and complete the other 50 things soon. g'night!

Thursday, August 07, 2008

Hot no more. (but in the good way)

Well I am EVER so pleased to report that I'm back to the land of the temperate climates. My shorts are no longer stuck to me in gross and inhuman ways, and there is not the constant whirrrr of the air conditioner buzzing through my brain. I've actually been back one whole day, but I wasn't able to post yesterday due to being very busy smooching all of the opened windows and making sweet, sweet love to the weatherman as he whispered "with a high of 89 degrees" into my non-sweaty ear. Priorities, people -- I has them.

Anyway, tomorrow I will regale you with tales of my trip and stuff. It will be awesome, because my brain will be able to think anything besides "I'm sweating where?"

Saturday, August 02, 2008

Too... Hot... To.........

I have never been this in love with air conditioning in my whole life. It's truly the greatest invention since INVENTIONS and I want to buy stock in the company responsible or write an epic poem about it's wonderfulness or have "Air Conditioning is SUPER-AWESOME!!!" tattood lovingly across my busom.

Because it's awesome. Is all I'm saying.

Four days ago I was snooty and pious and "ooh, air conditioning is for weenies and wimps and pansie-asses and I don't use it, even though I totally could, because la-dee-dah I'm ever so above it all!" Then I got into a car and drove south, south, south into the land of "wholly crap, who the hell ever thought it was a good idea to live HERE???? In places where they like to use the word "desert" in their NAME???" and I fell for Air Conditioning. I fell hard. I went to sleep dreaming of clandestine moonlit walks with air conditioning and woke up with the strong desire to stroke the big, jet-engine-fan wall unit to show my love and devotion. "Who needs a man," I ask myself "when you can have air conditioning?" Oh baby, I've got it bad for the old A.C.

Seriously, this is the hottest I've been since ever and ever. Yesterday? It was 114. DE. GREES. On PURPOSE! Every time I walk outside, even if it's just to run to the car to get something and run right back, I feel like I'm getting smacked in the whole front of my body with the vent-end of a clothing dryer! At night, when it's SUPPOSED to get COOLER, you go outside and the still hotness jumps on your head and smothers you from the top down. The first night I stood in the outside pool and wept for the water was the exact same temperature as the air. And the air was 98. Still degrees. This, my peoples, is just not right! I stand perfectly still outside for three minutes and the seat of my underwear fills up with water running down from my back. From all that strenuous standing around and trying not to die. My sister turned on the auto-open-thing on her van because nobody could TOUCH the DOOR HANDLES for all the ridiculous HOOOOOOOOOT!!!

I have never hated an outsideness more in my life.

I don't know if I'll get a chance to blog again before I get back (later I'll explain how it was that in order to do this post I had to wrestle the one and only lobby computer away from a never-ending stream of teenage European girls with angst!) but I'll try. In the meantime, whenever you feel a lovely, cool breeze think of me, trying to open the car door with my damned beach hat!