07.07.2002
feeling kinda
you may have noticed i'm been grumbling about the heat a bit lately. ;) sars wrote an excellent rant about it all, very funny. and after reading sars's entry, tanya wrote a guest entry for here. herewith, tanya's take on heat. :)
*sigh of relief*
I KNEW there was another human on the planet who hates summer as much as I do. I feel vindicated for the Summer Tantrums now.
In Alabama we have the added facet of BitchTease Weather: every afternoon it gets cloudy and dark. It thunders a lot. Sometimes there's lightning. And as we all gleefully anticipate RAIN, which just might lower the temperature that all-important two degrees for ten minutes or so, the BitchTease Weather smirks at us. Smirks. However, being Southern weather, it *does* have the gentility to stop short of actually taunting us with "nah-nah-nah-NAAAAAAAAH-nah" as it waits until we've all made Preparations For Rain, and then abruptly clears up and is Instantly Super-Sunny And Even Hotter Than It Was Before.
I live in an apartment in what my landlord's website euphemistically terms a "historic" building. Translation: the wiring and plumbing are circa 1940, the plaster walls and ceilings have roadmaps of badly-patched cracks in them and the Building itself still views the installation of Central Heating and Air Conditioning as a personal violation. I leave the AC on during the day while I'm at work, lest I come home and find the cats dead of heat exhaustion; still, until somewhere around midnight the only cool place in the apartment is the kitchen (needless to say, I don't cook during the summer unless threatened with the prospect of having to exist on raw eggs) - UNLESS I have to dry laundry.
See, the wonderfully observant folks who wired the building never planned for people to own more than maybe three things that needed electricity, and certainly not for the all to be running at the same time. Therefore, if I want to run the dryer I have to turn off the AC; otherwise, about ten minutes into the cycle, the circuit breaker trips. Which wouldn't be so bad if all the breaker boxes weren't down in the Stephen-King-scary basement area beneath the building (yes, I realize that a basement must, technically, be beneath the building; but this one is so creepy that it merits the redundant description).
It's so spooky down there that none of us are willing to go check the breaker boxes alone, and it's understood that if you knock on your neighbor's door and say, "I need to go check the breaker box," your neighbor will put on their Basement Shoes (there was a Plumbing Disaster a couple of years back involving sewer pipes, and our sorryass landlord never had the basement properly cleaned afterward - I'm sorry, but I don't consider spreading a truckload of lime over the mess "cleaning" it), get their flashlight, keys and cellphone, and Stand Guard for you while you scuttle over to the nest of breaker boxes in the crypt to restore power to your apartment.
I'm torn between wanting to move to, say, Maine for the summer and a virtually rabid fear of *cough* Yankees (sorry). The current plan is to make P see the wisdom of our living in Alabama from October through March and then moving to Glasgow from April through September. We have computers, we have modems, there's DSL - there's no reason one of us and then the other can't Work From Home (TM) for six months at a time.
:) thanks for the guest entry, t! your writing always makes me smile. oh - and readers, for the record? i've seen photos of the basement. she's not kidding.
