Hot enough?

Woke up this morning and when I stepped outside, found that the temperature was a relatively tepid 82 degrees…At six-freakin’-thirty in the morning.

This is Minnesota, kids. Land of 80-below windchills, five-foot tall snow drifts, ice fishing, and indoor saunas. Not big outdoor saunas that all of us are sharing.

It’s inhumane, really. There’s a point where the heat index becomes completely irrelevant: I mean, who really is going to notice that the heat index is now 110 and has improved over when it was 119 just an hour or two ago? And really, is the difference of an 82 degree dewpoint and a 78 degree dewpoint that big? The answer again is no. Not when it’s 96 degrees outside.

Let’s face it, I’m a big guy who carries his own climate with him. I don’t need another, hot, nasty climate hog piling on top of me just to see what happens. Hell, I sweat just by making a facial expression. I have to change my shirt when I conjugate a verb. If, someday, I find myself at an open house in Hell, I will most certainly be able to respond to the inevitable quip by saying “naw, I’ve been hotter.” Bite me, Beelzebub. The fact of the matter is that I don’t think I’ve stopped sweating since Memorial Day. I single-handedly could end the drought in Texas if they just gave me the chance t come on down there and sweat a spell…

I was outside in the elements far more than I really wanted to be this past weekend. And to hear the talking heads on the TV tell it, that was a walk in the park compared to what tomorrow (Wednesday) will offer, with a 100 degree temperature and upper 70 degree dewpoints. Might as well just take all of the carpets outside for the free steam cleaning, methinks. You need to start thinking about running the car 24 hours a day just to keep the insides from melting. Ice cream now isn’t a treat, it’s self-defense. Ice itself is now a legal right. Gatorade is now considered medicinal. And cooking in your own kitchen has been declared illegal in 18 counties. Or at least immoral. Leave it to the professionals, who cook from the comfort of ice baths conveniently placed in front of their industrial stoves.

I had a thought today, though: schools, governments and businesses have been closed in the winter due to extreme cold, which theoretically could kill you in minutes under the right circumstances; but why aren’t they closed during extreme heat? I could die in minutes just trying to make it to the car at the end of the work day. We had a fire drill today (yes, it was scheduled, but cancelled last week due to the threat of heavy rain on that day. They moved it to today…pshaw), and I think they rushed it just because they didn’t want us all getting back into the building after 5 minutes outside and making the place smell like a gymnasium (which it did anyway).

I don’t ever recall waking up in the morning and opening up the shades to find condensation on the outside of the windows. Is all of this a result of global warming? Or global wettening? Global moistening? Wait, that sounds like something you do to a stamp…Global dampenization? Oh, I suppose those melting polar ice caps have to go somewhere: I guess this year it’s Minnesota.

I’ve seen cigars just left outdoors because the humidors are no match. Librarians are going nuts because they’ve got to scramble materials between the air conditioned climate of libraries and outside, just to help preserve precious documents. But on the upside, there is absolutely no chance of suffering from static cling these days.

And we found the added bonus: it’s so damned hot that the legislature and governor had to stay inside to negotiate the terms of their budget surrender…er, agreement.

Ah, but I’ve been assured by the blowcombs that all will be better starting Thursday, when we get a reprieve: temperatures of 90 and dewpoints only in the 60s…Oh yeah. It’ll only feel like 100 then. I can’t wait!

See you tomorrow.