heat

As you may have heard, we've been having a heat wave since Tuesday, with another three days at least to go. It's been over 100F here, and we're in the first valley in from the coast (which is moderated due to a cold current). Further inland it's much hotter. Fortunately it's dry in these parts and the temperature goes down, at least somewhat, at night.

Having no air conditioning here, we've used that fact to evolve a pattern for dealing with this. About 5 p.m., B. turns on the fan in the bedroom window. This cools the bedroom off enough by bedtime to sleep in. Further judicious window-opening elsewhere in the house also helps. Generally it remains tolerable until about 11 a.m. At that point I head out for lunch and then spend the afternoon in the public library, both air conditioned places. B. manages the heat better than I do and stays home and watches the cats.

Wildfires out in the mountains and prairies are extensive, but they haven't come around here. What I'm more worried about is something breaking out due to excessive illegal fireworks usage, but it's 11.30 pm on the Fourth now and I've heard much less random banging than in most years.

Since the libraries weren't open today (holiday, natch), I took advantage of the annual invitation to attend a backyard party at the house of friends in Berkeley, which is exposed to the Golden Gate and thus not quite so warm. Pleasant all day, and didn't cool down enough in the late afternoon too much: usually the stragglers wind up chasing the remaining sun across the back yard, but we didn't do that this year.

Pleasant conversations as usual. Hostess is recovering from knee replacement surgery and is reaching the point where the benefits outweigh the discomfort. Other interesting people around: how often do you meet someone whose job is drug-testing athletes in Oslo, Norway?