Eric and I were like Jerry and Elaine when they went to visit Jerry's parents in Florida. You know where Elaine is kicking all of the covers off her in a little tantrum? I hated that I got all pissy, but something about the heat and having a sweaty back just makes me all cranky. That's why I got my car fixed.

How do you beat this heat? When you are in a house that is too hot or too cold for you, do you say something, or do you stay polite?

-- Anonymous, June 29, 1999

Answers

I'll never forget the first summer I was dating my now-husband. I'm from Texas -- lived here all my life -- and he's from Chicagoland. (Speaking of which, I thought "The Metroplex" as a euphemism for the Dallas-Ft. Worth area was silly, until I heard "Chicagoland.") He and I were in school together at what was then East Texas State University, but he went home for the summer, and I stayed in good ol' Commerce, Texas. (I lived and worked there as well as being in school, and didn't really have anyplace better to go in the summers. Unfortunately!) We'd been together pretty much constantly since we'd started "dating" (no one really "dated" in my crowd) in February, and I was seriously missin' my man. My mom felt sorry for me, so she let me use one of her free frequent-flyer tickets so I could go and visit him. I arrived at Midway airport in the middle of the biggest heatwave the town had seen for years. It was something like 1040 one of the days I was there, and every day it was at least 990. You'd think being from Texas I could handle heat like that. I mean, last year by this time we'd already had like a zillion 100+0 days. But as pamie said in her entry today, WE AIR CONDITION. WE STAY INSIDE, IN THE COOL, WHEN IT'S HOT ENOUGH TO BURN YOUR ASS ON YOUR CAR SEAT. They don't know what the frig A/C IS up there. And those people keep hanging out outside and stuff when it's that hot. (You're right, pamie, it's like they're trying to pretend it's not so hot or something.) I seriously thought I would die from the heat. Not to mention the humidity -- it was even more outrageous there than here, and it gets pretty bad here. ("It's not the heat, it's the stupidity." -- Mary Carr.) There's nothing I hate worse than to sweat. (Nothing like being a girl in the summertime in Texas -- once you break a sweat, you go around the rest of the day with a wet bra!) Thankfully, hubby's dad DID realize how hot it was, and he turned the A/C on in the house. Of course he kept it set around 820, but hey, that was way better than 1040. Unfortunately, everywhere else we went did not. Museums, restaurants, everywhere. I don't know what they were saving it for. It's kind of like, your house is burning down, and you have a fire hose already attached to the fireplug out front of your house, but you don't use it to put the fire out, because you're saving it for an "emergency." If 1040 doesn't count as an air conditioning emergency, then I don't know what does.

-- Anonymous, June 29, 1999

How appropriate that you bring this up today as I just dropped $465 on an air conditioner last night. What a friggin rip off but I absolutly could not take it any more. I feel like nothing is hotter or sticker than Brooklyn in the summer, plus it's so grimy I feel like I am covered in soot by the time I get home. Last night my apartment felt like the train station and for those of you who don't have the pleasure of waiting for an F train to take your ass home, trust me, it's at LEAST 15 degrees hotter in the station. Oh, and don't forget the smell....

So, I kind of feel like pamie, damn the electric bill - I am keeping the place as cold as I can without blowing a fuse. Happy summer, people!

-- Anonymous, June 29, 1999

I live in Sacramento. It's going to be 104 today, and it's supposed to be 105 tomorrow and I only have a wall unit air conditioner. When you read the extended forecast, it always shows it cooling off alot in a few days, I think to keep people from committing suicide. At least it's a "dry heat". Yeah, just more oven-like than sauna-like. I have tried, unsuccessfully, to fry eggs on my driveway, but they stuck to the cement. Duh. Next time I'm trying a fryng pan!

-- Anonymous, June 29, 1999

Joi, I hear you. I'm in Sacramento too (Hi neighbor) and I'm freakin' melting. All I can say is I now appreciate a studio apartment - it's a nice chilly icebox in there. I have a cute little convertible, but it doesn't have AC. So my choice is ride around in the sun and hope the wind will cool me, or ride in the shade and hope the wind can make it in the car to cool me. It's not a pretty choice.

I Tae Bo'd today for the first time (yay Mellie!) in a NON-ac'd wharehouse type building at work. Pity me.

MellieBee

-- Anonymous, June 29, 1999

Yeah, it's supposed to be between 104 and 109 today here. Last night I went to Home Depot at 8:30 and bought a ceiling fan and installed in my bedroom -it REALLY compliments the a/c. The ceiling fan box said "installs in minutes" -they just don't say how many minutes. Mine was about 65 minutes.

The thing that drives me crazy is when it doesn't cool off enough at night -Last night when I went to bed at 11pm, it was still 80 degrees. I left the a/c on all night, which I hate doing, but I've gotta sleep!

-- Anonymous, June 29, 1999

I'm originally from South Texas, which is even more humid than Austin, but even in poor neighborhoods, people still have wall units and crank it up all summer. Some of my best memories of are going to grandma's house and being in the "cool room," the bedroom that was closed and had a wall unit all to itself. Man, I'd nap in there and watch "Pinwheel" on Nickelodeon and life just couldn't get any better.... And then, the space pirates came, crying, "YAR!!!!!"...

-- Anonymous, June 29, 1999

Several years ago, when I was working on my degree, I got a job as a resident assistant at a dorm at the University of North Texas in Denton. At the time, the dorm I was in was the only non-air- conditioned dorm on campus. Most of the school year, this was not a problem, but when the R.A.s moved into the building in mid-to-late August, it was very humid and very, very hot.

Most people knew to bring big box fans, but all I'd brought was a little rotating fan that didn't actually rotate. The first night I was there, I had to change the sheets the next morning, because I'd tossed and turned all night and soaked the bed with sweat. I quickly learned that the only thing to do was take frequent, icy showers-- especially before bedtime--and sleep with the windows open.

The next year, they installed air conditioners in all the rooms, and we were all very grateful.

-- Anonymous, June 29, 1999

Does anyone feel like a cave dweller in the Summer heat waves?

I sure do! I keep the blinds down in the house to keep maximum coolness (sorry houseplants), and I try to log up a bunch of extra hours at work (use their a/c), and then scurry home, back to my cave. I try to have plenty of food at work so I don't have to go out for lunches, and really only see the sun when I ride my bike to and from work.

It's weird -especially if the heat lasts for a long time.

-- Anonymous, June 29, 1999

When I got my driver's license, my dad bought one of his old company cars for me. 1985 Chevy Celebrity.

Dark maroon, inside and out. It should have been called "Metallic Eggplant." It might as well have been called "really purply black."

I carried a stack of towels, white towels, in the rear floorboard, and every morning when I parked at school, I would proceed to drape the inside of the car with the towels, specifically wrapping the steering wheel with the thickest towel.

If I didn't, I would have to approach my car like a one-woman SWAT team, sneaking up on the car, crouching low to keep from being flash-burned as I opened each door, and then crouch in any available shade for 5 minutes until it was cool enough to duck in, start the car and turn on the AC, and then wait another 5 for it to be cool enough to actually get inside.

Sometimes, the weather would trick me, and it would be raining in the morning and I wouldn't put up the towels and then the sun would come out around lunchtime (we weren't allowed to go out to the parking lot during school hours, so there was nothing I could do). There would actually be steam coming out of the car when I opened the doors.

Once, after a towel-less day at Six Flags, I burned my hands so badly on the steering wheel I couldn't make fists for a week.

I drive a white car now. For as long as I live in the South, I will always drive a white car, maybe silver or champagne, and I will always have cloth seats.

Dad got rid of that car, by the way, after the air compressor burned out the third time.

-- Anonymous, June 29, 1999

Oh yeah, the hot car/steering wheel nightmare. It has just started getting really hot here (in Sacramento-it seems that only us and Texas get hot enough to whine about-hey, didn't they say we were going to have a cooler than usual summer????), and today was the first time I remembered to put up the windshield screen-it's a cool metallic one which doesn't really work, but looks like it should. And the steering wheel-yikes!! Even a towel won't keep it cool. The only place I can park my car to catch the light to work is a tree-less parking lot, no shade relief. I just got back from buying patio accessories-plastic glasses, plates, festive tablecloth, etc. I am fantasizing that it will actually be cool enough to sit outside this summer. Doubtful, but we do have "delta breezes" that kick in after what seems like a month of unbearable heat. Hope, hope.

-- Anonymous, June 29, 1999

personally, i think it wasn't only the color - it was just the celebrity. i have a friend who, until two weeks ago when the air conditioning exploded while he was driving, drove a very very pale blue '86 celebrity, and that car was still always hot as hell whenever you got in it, even if it had been sitting in the shade. and the air conditioning was a piece of crap, to boot.

when it's just hot here in baltimore, i can handle it. when it gets humid and they have those warnings on tv about how it's dangerous to breathe the air, i have problems. then i just hole up in our basement, which could double as a meat locker, for some reason known only to god. maybe it's the tile floor, maybe it's that it doesn't have any windows, but damn, it's cold. and i watch movies to my heart's delight without dying of heat exhaustion.

-- Anonymous, June 29, 1999

I'm in Sacramento as well (in fact, I know you MellieBee - oooo spooky) and I refuse to leave the house between the hours of 8am -8pm. We've just got a wall unit for the entire house unfortunately, so my room gets unbearably hot, especially with all the computer equipment. I really worry about it getting overheated sometimes. I keep telling myself this is my last Sacramento summer, but I always forget how bad it is and then by the time it heats up again it's too late to move.

I'm going north damnit. Portland or Seattle... I've suffered too

-- Anonymous, June 29, 1999

I'm so damn paranoid now that someone knows me but I don't know who they are.....AAAAAAAAH

It's hot out there. I just went out for an ice cream cone and wanted to die. I have to take my dog to the vet this afternoon...i'm glad I only have to drive about a mile with him. He's LITTLE and black and he'd fry if it was any farther away.

Bellatrix, who ARE YOU? I'm scared mommy.. MellieBee the Stalked just kidding

-- Anonymous, June 29, 1999

heat? what heat? i don't see no stinkin' heat..

i live in washington state. our summer currently consists of rain, drizzle, grayness, and irrepressible dreariness. it probably doesn't help that i'm taking classes--economics and yoga--at the community college, either.

we won't have nice weather until the gods smile upon us. when that blessed day arrives and the sun shines down a blissful 80 degrees, we will be pleased for five minutes, then drag out every last oscillating fan in every closet and leave them on full blast at all times. some may even go to extremes and purchase an air conditioning unit, but those are rare and usually make us northwesterners feel chilly.

my family has always liked to enjoy the summer by going to the mall and ice skating. we don't anymore because (a) we moved from portland to olympia and it has one lousy mall, (b) there isn't a skating rink, and (c) i hate both malls and skating rinks, anyway.

anyway, when the sun actually does become a problem, we usually solve it by the following method: keep the house cool by keeping all the windows open all night, then shutting them in the morning along with the blinds to keep all the nice, cool air locked in. it works fairly well, provided you don't mind the mosquitoes too much.

mosquitoes are evil.

-- Anonymous, June 29, 1999

The heat! The heeeaaat! I live in Wisconsin for God's sake it's not supposed to be hot here. It's been in the low nineties all week. I work in a small farming type town so when you walk out of the door at 3:30 all you smell is warm cow crap and old cabbage from last year. We keep our central air on sixty-eight degrees 24-7 from the beginning of June until the beginning of September. After that I have to bitch about it being seventy below zero. I can't win.

-- Anonymous, June 29, 1999

Part of the problem is that, at least in the Northeast, electric rates are incredibly high. If we run an air conditioner *just a couple hours* a day then our monthly electric bill will be well over $100. We don't rely on air conditioning because it's prohibitively expensive.

-- Anonymous, June 30, 1999

All right, all right, I'm not trying to be a bitch here, but...anybody recognize the phrase "global warming?"

Yeah, it sucks to be hot, but all y'all keeping it sixty five degrees in your apartment so that you can lounge around in your cute little cardigans are just kinda contributing to the whole problem. Fossil fuel burning, kids--that's what makes the nice cooly-cool air.

And don't tell me I don't know hot. I spent last summer working in the thorn forest in Puerto Rico. We'd stagger through the crunchy dry extremely open 95 degree-plus forest all day long and then come home to the (Gasp!) un-airconditioned field station where we lived and drink lots of rum and tonic and ice. Yup, hot. And I lived through it.

This is not to say I don't occasionally appreciate going into the giant deep freeze known as "the supermarket" when it's 95 degrees out. For the first few minutes, anyway. Then my legs start to turn purple. And what really gets me is the stores that keep their doors open when it's ten billion degrees out and then run their airconditioning ragged trying to keep it sixty degrees inside. Didn't your mom teach you not to do that?

Anyway,we leave the thermostat at eighty in the summer. Sounds hot, I know. But what do you think when the weatherman says "It's eighty degrees out there today?" I, at least, think, "Hey, not too hot at all."

-- Anonymous, June 30, 1999

Good point Carol!

I can't stand constant air conditioning -I try to rely on the system of opening windows at night to let the cool in and shutting it all up in the morning, it works pretty good, especially in my neighborhood where the original residents had the good sense to plant shade trees to keep the sun off your roof. Our local power utility also gives away free shade trees, they'll even help you decide where and how to plant them for maximum energy savings, pretty cool.

I DO have to say, though, when you need it, you need it! Once my house gets over the 82 degree mark, which usually means it's over 100 outside, my resolve breaks and the a/c kicks in until it's sane out there.

I think people and businesses DO need to lay off the theromostat a bit, I work for state gov't, and when it gets really hot and everyone's a/c is one, we get these orders from the govenor to turn up the thermostat and save some power. I think we should remind malls and stores, and such that 78 degrees is plenty cool for human survival.

Good alternates to a/c are FANS (my collection is seven and growing), shade trees, window screens, and if you live in a dry-heat type place, a swamp cooler is very nice and quite inexpensive to run.

stay cool!

(105 today in Sacramento!)

-- Anonymous, June 30, 1999

I'm in Sacramento too and I agree, Carol, although I do use my a/c now that I've finally got one. (YAY!) For the last three summers we were in an un-a/c'd apartment, top floor, no insulation, no shade, full southern exposure against an asphalt alley -- it literally got to 120+ degrees in there on a regular basis during heat waves. It was always 10-20 degrees hotter than the outside, which meant that even a 90 degree day was miserable. I've lived in many, many houses and apartments in the Sacramento valley, and I firmly believe that apartment was the hottest place in the region.

Now we keep our thermostat between 78-80 and we think we're in paradise. Our new house is almost completely shaded so the a/c only runs a few hours a day; we use fans and open windows at night and in the mornings, and then leave the a/c set at 78 while we're gone during the day (we have a dog who starts panting at 80 degrees, and we can't leave him TOO much water because we're still housebreaking him).

We're going to install a whole house fan in the next week or so to cool the house off at night and take advantage of those mythical delta breezes -- where the hell are they this year, by the way? They're usually here in June and July and then disappear for our legendary hot August nights.

And I'd like to propose the death penalty for those people who want the office A/C set at 65 degrees because that's how cool their houses and cars are and they can't take the climate shock. There is no reason humans can't live at 78 degrees, and then I wouldn't have to freeze all day and feel that much hotter when I go to walk home. How come the 65 degree people always win?

-- Anonymous, June 30, 1999

Beth, that reminds me of the Summer I spent in D.C. -It was my first experience with hot & humid, which was really weird -but even weirder was that everything was over-air conditioned. It was like they were all trying to compensate for the fact that the temp and humidity were both in the 90's. I used to wear a parka in the office I worked in (I'm not kidding) with the zipper all the way up and the hood up -I would warm my hands from the vents on the sides on my computer to keep from shivering. The head guy walked in one day, looked at me and goes "You cold?". "k-k-k-k-k-k-killll-h-h-him".

-Someone later realized that the laser printer was under the thermostat, which thought is was 90 everytime someone hit print.

I also got super dehydrated there because my hotel room had no opening windows and a/c was NOT an option, it was what you got. I would wake up every morning with my eyelids stuck to my eyeballs.

I've thought of leaving my a/c on for my dog, but she stays outside no matter what (dog door). She likes hanging out under the back porch, so the a/c is off during the day.

-- Anonymous, June 30, 1999

A/C junkies are just like heroin junkies. The more they use the more they need to use. It's sad, really.

-- Anonymous, June 30, 1999

I would think your dog would like a/c with all that hair, Eric, but what do you know. Dogs are weird. Our puppy definitely dislikes heat (which he defines as anything over 78 degrees), although he's getting smart about it -- he gets himself wet with his little rabbit-waterer thing, and then goes to sleep.

The cats are the opposite -- they used to push back the blinds and sleep in the sun in the old apartment -- except if it got over 105 outside, at which point they'd consent to sleep under the bed or under the bathtub or stretched out next to tupperware containers of ice that we left out for them. With the house now at 78-80 degrees, they spend their days huddled in their little fleece beds, shivering and cursing me.

Of course, I should note that this house doesn't get warmer than 78 unless the temp outside is over 100, so the cats are cold all the time. If it's 90 outside, it's 73 in here and the cats think we've moved them to Antarctica.

All of my animals are big babies.

-- Anonymous, June 30, 1999

Beth, it's not just your animals. Our Lab will sleep only on tile surfaces when it's hot out (as it has been here in Dallas for a while). He plops down like a seal so his belly is against the cool floor; at night, instead of sleeping beside the bed (as he usually does), Indy snores away in our bathroom.

I read somewhere cats are originally desert animals; ours certainly seeks out sunbeams even in this near-100 weather.

-- Anonymous, June 30, 1999

Yeah....I started off innocently enough by running the AC constantly. Then I started eating popsicles while sitting in front of the AC unit. After that I began to wear an Otter Pop bonnet on my head - those frigid little tubes feel so good melting against my fevered scalp. I have been in a spiral of degeneration ever since...packing ice into my underwear got too soggy so I had a special cryosuit made for me out of ice packs and refrigerator coils. I now have to breathe a rareified blend of Freon and inert gas, and aspire to turn the stinking, squalid sprawl of Gotham City into a pristinely frozen wasteland. No love or hate or pain, just icy perfection and stillness. The Batman will not stop me this time.

-- Anonymous, June 30, 1999

All you pansies can cry all you want, but until you come into Hell's Fire -- Washington DC -- you ain't been through ANYTHING. This place was a swamp, yes a swamp, before it was the nation's capital. Perhaps the only thing as bad as this place is the Bayou, but at least there you are surrounded by water. Here, they put concrete over the swamp so it gets all humid and then the concrete heats it up another 20 degrees. My building's AC is free though because I don't have a thermostat, so I keep the air-flow on the highest.

And Pamie, yes it is the skank-water in Philly that makes the cheesesteak so good. Where'd you get your's from? I assume it was just a run-of-the-mill place, but Pat's and Gino's are the "legends" of Philly. Man, now you got me all hungry. I could go for one "with" right now, as we say up there...

-- Anonymous, June 30, 1999

I live in NY and it is horrible here all the concrete and subways and the humidity makes the city practically uninhabitable during the summer (which is also when the tourists come out) and the stench, whooo boy, nothing like NY in the summertime the combination of piss and crack. My apartment is a third floor walk up with no AC so I have two fans that travel with me from room to room along with my three animals who all take the best spots in front of the fans which leaves me sweltering no matter what I do fun huh?

-- Anonymous, June 30, 1999

Sarah - I know exactly what you are talking about regarding the smell here in NY. I don't remember any other summer that smelled this bad. You really need a gas mask to survive walking down some of the blocks around here.

As far as the heat, I don't have to deal with it much as my apartment is a basement apartment and stays pretty cool, which is good because I have an air conditioner that sounds like it's working, but doesn't actually blow any air. It thinks that if it sounds good, I'll think it's working, but I'm not that stupid. I'm on to it's little trick!

What were we talking about again? Oh, never mind. :)

-- Anonymous, June 30, 1999

Eric--

I'm not too sure where I got the cheesesteak from, but it was strange. We had been driving around and I saw this big blue building and I said,"Ooh, is that where we're getting cheesesteaks?" And they said, "Yes, actually, how did you know?" And I said, "Because it says 'hoagies.' You know a place is good when they call them 'hoagies'."

My dad just got a case of Wise Potato Chips for Father's Day. You can't get those down here. I had a few (okay, a lot) when I was in town the other weekend. Brought tears of memory to my eyes.

Sniff! I miss Yankee food.

Anyone want to send me Pierogies?

-- Anonymous, June 30, 1999

Yesterday was the hottest day of the year in my town (a suburb of San Francisco), and it was only 95°.  This morning the temp was in the upper 50's!.  Back into to the 90's today...   We just open the windows at night and wake up cold.

-- Anonymous, June 30, 1999

Dave, I sure do miss living in the San Francisco, where the temperature is always just right. No heatwave ever lasts more than about 3 hours, and the fog is always waiting to cool you down in the evening. Ahhh...

Oh course, it's up to use in the calif. central valley to draw that fog in to cool the Bay down -as we used to say while windsurfing, the Bay doens't blow, the Valley sucks....ain't it the truth

Hey can we use HTML stuff in here??

...neat.

-- Anonymous, June 30, 1999

Go back to the Bay Area, you big wimp! Like to see you grow tomatoes in the fog!

Since I now walk back and forth to work 9 times a day because I have to come home to take the puppy out, I know all the shadiest routes between north midtown and J Street. And by the way, Eric -- your street isn't on the list. Get your neighbors to plant some trees!

-- Anonymous, June 30, 1999

Okay, I'll whine like everybody else. I manage just like everyone else most of the time; but work is the exception. On the days that it is 100 degrees outside it gets up to 120/130 in the broiler that is my workplace. Higher on days that it is...higher outside. Uuhhh.....it SUCKS! They post little pictures of what heat exhaustion and heat stroke looks like everywhere. We stand in front of the pictures and have contests to see who looks worse than the pictures. We have people that pass out quicker from dehydration than actual heat stroke. I'm done whinin' now.

-- Anonymous, June 30, 1999

Wow, I did not realize I was such a bad horrible person. If I kept the air off I would come home and my rats would be little tiny skeletons, and that would be bad. Plus it wouldn't smell real good with the little rat bodies baking in the heat like that. I'm saving lives with my central air, thank you. Really, I am a good person that would give you the shirt off my back so let's not judge me by my use of air conditioning :)

-- Anonymous, June 30, 1999

Pamie -- Hoagies are like subs, cheesesteaks are like...uh...cheesesteaks. There's a difference. But Hoagies are better than subs because they have the cheesesteak skank-water rolls. And there's something else that makes it better. Philly Luvin', I guess. Big Blue place...don't know it. But next time you go back (or you can even have it FedEx'd to you packed in dry ice, call up Lee's Hoagie House (there's a few of them all around) and get an Italian-Cheltenham. Oh baby.... Nothin' finer....

Can you get Tastykakes down there? I'll send you and Eric a few boxes of those if you can't. They now make a butterscotch krimpet CAKE! Like a huge slab of butterscotch krimpet!

-- Anonymous, July 02, 1999

Man, I just WISH it cooled off enough at night here to let the cool air in. You just don't open your windows at night after about April 15 in Texas (unless we get a bizarre cool spell). Remember last summer? How it didn't drop below 800 at night for like forty-leven- hunnert days in a row? (Not to mention all those 100+0 highs in a row we had.) And the humidity was in the 90's every day? Open windows? I think not! Even when it's in the 70's at night, it's still too moist to sleep comfortably without the ceiling fan set on "wind tunnel" and stirring up all the dust and therefore my allergies.

Pity me. I had a flat tire yesterday in this heat. I wasn't sure if it was just me, because I really loathe these ridiculously hot Texas summers (yeah, I could move somewhere cooler, but I'm obviously not very bright), and I tend to think it's really hotter than it is. But when the lugnuts -- and even the part-plastic hubcaps -- were too hot to touch, I knew it was really hot. (My fingertips still even hurt a little!) There's nothing worse than being in the broiling hot sun on the side of the road somewhere (nothing like a little concrete to cool things off) trying to change a tire. With pneumatically- installed nuts. And having girlie upper-body strength and not being able to get them off. Talk about humiliation -- thankfully a Good Samaritan stopped to help, and wouldn't let me do anything. I told him all I needed was the lugnuts loosened! But I felt like an idiot because I am perfectly capable of changing my own tire... except for that part about not being strong enough to unscrew a silly nut. So I just let this man do everything, because he insisted, and because I was too hot and sweaty to care about feminism -- not to mention the fact that I was wearing a loose v-neck dress and sandals, and everytime I leaned over to do something to the tire my dress blew open and gave the world a peep show. I guess this posting should really be somewhere discussing letting a man do all the work like some helpless girl, not on a forum about This Friggin' Heat. But This Friggin' Heat is turning my brain to mush and I got sidetracked. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it!

I just hope this summer isn't as bad as last summer. I couldn't take another one like that. I almost went insane. You go nuts here, going from heat to cold (a/c) to heat to cold all the time. I can't WAIT to freeze my ass off in San Francisco in August!

I have to say I didn't know it got as bad in Sacramento as it does here (except for the humidity). I used to have this "TEXAS IS THE HOTTEST PLACE ON EARTH" chip on my shoulder, but I'll gladly share it!

Stay cool y'all -- literally!

-- Anonymous, July 02, 1999

I don't think Sacramento is quite as bad as Texas -- we get some humid days, but never very bad (80% humidity is a really dreadful summer day for us), and they're not the norm. But we get lots of 105+ days, and we usually have a month or so where it never seems to get below 80 degrees overnight. What we have to make things bearable: (1) many, many large trees; (2) lots of rivers that all kind of converge in the city; (3) delta breezes during the early summer that cool everything off once the sun goes down.

I grew up 40 miles north of Sacramento, where there were no trees, there was no river, and the wind always blew from the north, which means hot and dry. It's much better here.

-- Anonymous, July 02, 1999

PKAWWK! Chicken Grrl loves life!

-- Anonymous, July 02, 1999

oh man, is it hot. i cant do it, someone help me, this dc heat is much too much, and it happens every year, huh? whats up with that? i mean, every year we get "heat warnings" and there's always the "heat wave of ___" its insane, i mean, its not like everyone didnt know it was coming, but we sit around in our insanly over-ac'd houses, and yes, im guilty of it too, and no i dont feel bad, and bitch bitch bitch, and yes, im going to bitch too, its hot, nasty hot, and humid, and if i hear "its not the heat, its the humidity that'll kill ya" im gonna scream, its just insane, and my crappy car has no ac, so i get to fry like bacon everyday going to and from classes, oh yay, im soo frickin happy, geez, i think hell just called and asked us to send them some of the heat, its getting too cool down there, okay, im done, one nice little venting session, okay, bye

-- Anonymous, July 06, 1999