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Tue | May 30, 2006

heat

Summer is here-- right on time, over Memorial Day weekend. Summer and winter are decisive seasons. There is no question of what they are; they are, respectively, hot and cold. Spring and autumn have more indecisive personalities. At any rate summer is here because there is no question about whether it is hot or not; it is always hot and it's just a matter of degree.

With summer comes dealing with the heat. Fans help a little but not that much. The better strategy is to go to the library for all or most of the day, remembering that there is three hour parking-- not that I have ever seen a ticket in that parking lot. But to be safe, to go for a few hours, then have lunch, then go back. Or to take the fifteen minute walk over, and stay without worrying about parking.

The problem then becomes dealing with being at the library. It is well-lit and thanks to the renovations a few years ago there are places to sit, and it's nice. Obnoxious people leave their residue, though, in the form of scraps of paper or dustiness and stickiness. And sometimes they attempt to sit at your table, as this woman did just now. I looked at her and then spun around to see if there were other tables open, and there were. And she moved. Good. Then there is the problem that it is so cold, and it's a shock to go from hot to cold like this. I am getting a headache right now just sitting in this refrigerator.

In elementary school they would tell us not to move. And to put the fans away. We made fans out of notebook paper by folding them like an accordion and pinching one end. Movement, they explained, generates heat. The lights also generate heat. So we'd turn out the lights and sit there in semi-darkness. We'd wait until June 21.

Now another source of heat is my laptop, which could shut down if it's too hot. So that's another reason to get out of the house.

I suppose, of course, I could turn the ac on.

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