It was 71 degrees this morning when I woke up. That alone should be a crime in these parts, especially when it was 5 a.m., and it had just finished raining and occasionally thundering not 30 minutes earlier.
Yes, I was awake for a bit between 4 and 5 this morning. The rain was the first to wake me, then the cat, who tried to casually but forcefully inform me that the sun was coming up and she was, indeed, hungry. I crawled back to bed by about 4:15 and listened to the rain fall outside. I dozed off, only to wake up at the sound of some distant rolling thunder. Then I was awakened for good at 5 by my alarm.
The rain had stopped, but the house was muggy and warm. The weatherman on the radio cheerfully informed me it was 71 at that hour, and that we’d be facing a day of mid-90s. I figured it was a sign of the day to come if the sidewalk hadn’t even dried off by the time I left to take Patrick to school at 7:30, some three hours after the rain had finished.
I approach very hot and very cold days cautiously, mainly because when it’s this hot, I sweat hard enough so that I’m mistaken for some melting ice sculpture. But the prime concern is at work, where our newly renovated building seems to have some schizophrenic issues with the HVAC system: some days it’s colder than the break room refrigerator. Other days, it feels like there hasn’t been any movement of air at all. But since we’ve moved in, there’s been some engineer coming to our corner with some sort of thermometer. He takes a reading, feels for air coming out of the vents, usually gives some sort of grunt of interest or approval, and then trudges off to his little control room in the lower level of the building. We’ve complained about the problems in our corner since we moved in–while the rest of the area is reasonably comfortable, my group’s little section of cubes, up against some windows, is rarely truly comfortable. And, as if to just rub my techie nose in things, all of the engineers who have come up to see what’s going on in our area have blamed the problem on “the software,” which apparently controls all air flow through the building. Nice. It’s good to know that my discomfort is probably the result of Microsoft (R) Blows-alotTM. The problem is probably that it won’t run on Windows 7. With my luck, it’s probably exclusive to Vista or something.
I had my little personal fan blowing on me throughout the day when I was at my desk. But I watched my little weather widget on one of my screens, and saw that the temperature was knocking on the door to 90 at lunchtime.
Last week, some workers came to the office and put sod in the deeply scarred sections of the lawn that had been used by some of the construction equipment. Today, that sod, which had been so lush and green last week, had turned completely tanish-brown. And in fact, the pieces seemed to have shrunk, so that each piece had pulled away from its neighbor, leaving large voids of just dirt.
A coworker and I wondered whose bonus would pay for the re-sodding that was surely to come.
The news promised one more day of this oppressive heat, then a dramatic cool down was in store. I’ll enjoy throwing open the windows again, if for no other reason than I really don’t want to blitz the electrical bill that much…
Ah, the cheapskate in me comes shining through.
See you tomorrow.