Soundtrack in my head: Bananarama, “Cruel Summer”
There is no air-conditioning in my co-op house except in the room of one person willing to pay extra for it. Some spiritual people talk about the virtues of sweating in the summer as a means of eliminating toxins. I don’t always feel very virtuous when I sweat, but I have definitely noticed the benefits, even if it means in the short term feeling a bit exhausted from the summer heat.
In our house, we’ve had discussions and debates over how to best keep the house cool in the summer heat. We’ve discovered that it is usually most effective to open the windows at night to let in the cooler air, but then close the windows and curtains during the daytime to keep the cooler air in and the summer heat out. It only works when the previous night’s temperature is significantly cooler. Last summer, I stayed with a guy in Minneapolis when the temperature were near or above 100 degrees, and I was amazed at how comfortable his house was despite not having air conditioning.
I have a variation of the above “stay cool” practice which admittedly is not the most energy-efficient. This practice has me running the fans all night to the point where the temperature in my room dips to about 58 degrees F (14 degrees C ) and I’m curled up underneath the quilt. And then, right before I leave, I shut all the windows and close the door. It works pretty well.
This is not directly due to the summer heat, but Vacation Beard is now gone. The beard was actually starting to look pretty good–that is, from the viewpoint of six inches away from my face. Blond hair can often look invisible as facial hair. While having a webcam converation with a close friend from Japan, I asked her how my beard looked so far, and she couldn’t see it at all. I thought the beard looked better than the last time I’d tried to grow one. Nevertheless when I looked in the mirror, I found that I could not stop thinking of Steve Carell’s character in “Little Miss Sunshine,” and that just didn’t fit the image I had of myself. So I pulled out the razor and shaving cream, and the deed was done within five minutes.
