I hate hot weather, hate being sticky, own an air conditioner, muscled that air conditioner into a window a week or so ago, and. . . I don’t use it.
I hate being hot and sticky and have a way to be neither and I don’t take it.
Right now I’m sitting in my chair with a fan propped in a window and angled toward me. Still, I’ve got my shirt half rolled up and if I move a body part even a smidge out of the blowing air it will start to sweat.
It’s not that bad out, actually: temps should fall below 70 overnight and it’s not humid, so sleep (with, again, the fan angled toward me in bed) should be fine. It’s just that it takes awhile longer for the cool of the outside to push aside the day’s accumulated heat.
And tomorrow, tomorrow shouldn’t be bad, either. Tuesday will suck, and Wednesday, even more so; my line for turning on the a/c is over 90 and humid during the day, over 75 and humid at night, and it looks like that line might be breached.
And yet odds are even that I’ll rely on my fan to wave around hot air rather than shut the windows and let the a/c clear out all concerns about the weather.
It’s been a cool June so far in NYC, but you know that by July the weather will be filthy and by August, murderous.
So, in “honor” of the worst of the four seasons, some sun and summer songs.
From back in me college days:
This got a lot of play when I was living in the apartment on Breese Terrace (right across from Camp Randall stadium). I don’t know that I yet hated summer—I was probably still operating under the delusion of fellow northerners that one should be glad that summer’s here, as it least it’s not winter—but regardless, I liked this one. Still do.
This one’s a throwback to the seventies:
I didn’t have this album—this came out before my album-buying days—but my older sister had a copy of Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy that I listened to, up in our shared bedroom, so I tend to associate all songs of this era with the seventies, even if I didn’t actually listen to them back then.
As to that first album I bought? Foreigner, Double Vision. I was mad for Foreigner, and at twelve or thirteen, when I started really paying attention to music, this. . . this is what I wanted.
I still listen to old Elton John. Foreigner? Not so much.
I fuckin’ love this song, still:
In fact, I hopped out of my chair and lip-synced to this as it played on my tinny computer speakers.
This would make a great song for a chorus, don’t you think? So many ways to take this.
Man, I fuckin’ loved all of early U2, and while I don’t hate them now, at some point getting their new music was no longer necessary. But this song reminds me of when it was.
This is kind of a trash song, but I do love me some Be Good Tanyas:
A friend of mine who, well, kinda of worked music festivals (as in, he had a job that mostly had nothing to do with music but sometimes did), once booked the Be Good Tanyas. They fought like hell offstage, he told me.
But the show was fine.
This one was included on a mixtape sent to me in grad school by my friend L:
I don’t know this artist well, or, really, at all, but apparently Eddie Vedder later covered the song.
Anyway, I listened to this song on my walkman on the number 2 bus taking me down Franklin, heading toward and away home.
And, of course, this is the song that’s counts as hopeful for mopes like me:
God, what a great song.
The Police was one of those bands I was introduced to by MTV. I don’t know what anyone thinks about MTV these days, but back in the ’80s they played all kinds of shit I couldn’t get on the radio.
Falls is between Green Bay and Milwaukee, so I’d listen to stations out of there (mostly Milwaukee, honestly, 93.9 (?) WQXR! and a station at 97-point-something), the relevant ones of which were either Top-40 (which I, a cool teenager, disdained) and hard rock. I was into the latter in my early teens, but once I heard post-punk and New Wave, it was all over.
Anyway, the Milwaukee School of Engineering was rumored to have a great indie station, but the signal was weak and we almost never got it up in Sheb county.
So MTV was it. It was terribly white, back in those days, which I might have tutted about, but honestly, I dug the Police and the Eurythmics and the B-52’s and the Femmes and BoDeans and on and on, so Music TeleVision fed me what I needed.
There are many, many, many, MANY more summer/sun songs, but here’s one on how to deal with the heat:
Last summer I made it alllllll the way through without stuffing the air conditioner into a window.
This year, I made it to July 19.
Actually, I put the a/c up yesterday, knowing I needed to clean it prior to use and thinking I might need it overnight, but nope, not until this morning did I plug ‘er in and turn ‘er on.
Again, not generally a fan of air conditioning, but when it’s over 90 degrees and humid, I am mighty grateful for it.
Of course, I’d been even mightier grateful if the temps would fall so I wouldn’t need the damned thing.
~~~
Once again, a big THANKYOU to P. & T., who bought the thing for me lo’ those many—okay, 6—years ago.
Okay, so I should have taken the picture before replacing the screen.
I would have done this earlier in the week except that I was a) sick, and, as a result of a, b) tired. And it was rather cool here last week.
Anyway, I only planted 6 plants this year and it seemed a bit sparse, so I checked last year’s blog posts (search=basil), and it looked like I crammed in more plants (which, given that they pretty much gave up the ghost by mid-summer, might have been too many*).
I’m thinkin’ that the nursery last year sold them in 4-packs (and I bought 2) and this year in six-packs, hence the six.
(I did have two 6-packs in hand at one point, but was dubious, so I finally read the little plastic info thingy the nursery sometimes includes in plants, and it said to *plant ’em 8″ apart. Yeah, 12 plants in a 16″ box woulda been too many.)
Anyway, the basil box is back. One of the few unreservedly good things about summer.
The posts of me bitching about the hot and the mugg and the sun and the smell, capped off by the August I-hate-everything rant?
Yeah, didn’t happen this summer. Because this summer was. . . not bad.
Not bad at all; in fact, it was the best summer since I moved to New York.
There were occasional hot days, and a fair amount of humid days, but in June-July-August, there were damned few hot-and-humid days. The worst week of the summer was the first week of September, with temps in the eighties and dew points in the seventies—uncomfortable, but which discomfort was easily abated with a fan.
Okay, during one or two of those early-Sept days I could have turned on the a/c, but since I hadn’t bothered to put it in the window, I made do with the fan.
That’s right, it was so not-awful that I never needed to heave that box into position; instead, it remained hunkered down on an upside-down milk-crate beside my bed, an ersatz bed-stand for my (30+-year-old) clock radio and a couple of plants.
The only downside to the many cloudy days was the sadness of my windowbox-basil. It enjoyed the sun and rain thru most of June, but there was a big windy storm at the end of June, and it never fully recovered. I got enough leaves throughout the rest of the summer for salads and sandwich toppers, but not enough for pesto.
Still, that’s a trade-off I will make every time. And hell, isn’t that what greenmarkets are for, anyway? I bought a coupla’ bunches for a few bucks and whipped up another year’s worth o’ basily and garlicky goodness.
Of course, me being me, I’ve already had moments of dread about next summer—which is a decent argument for trying to get away from oneself from time to time.
And hey, it’s supposed to be a cold winter! That I can look forward to!
It was hot and sticky the past coupla’ days—just about hottily-sticky enough for me to have hoisted my a/c into the window and cranked her on.
Just about, but not quite.
I know, I hate summer, hate the heat, the stickiness, the sun, and, by August, everything, so you’d think that I’d have that a/c humming whenever the temp got heatward of 85.
Except, of course, I don’t like a/c. I’m glad for it, sure—nothing like standing on a stinky-hot subway platform to make one glad for the air-cool of the car—but my appreciation is merely dutiful, and, frankly, even a little resentful:
If it weren’t so fucking hot I wouldn’t need the damned thing.
Anyway, since I wasn’t thinking about how miserable I was every second of the day and I was able to sleep well enough with the window fan, I figured I could go without.
That’s a reasonable reason for laying off.
The real reason? Thunderstorms were to blow through, dropping the temp into the seventies.
Okay, it’s not quite that hot—just lower nineties.
Still, I have not yet put my air conditioner in the window, relying instead on a fan.
Why? One, I don’t like air conditioning.
Oh, I appreciate it when it’s sweltering enough to melt my face, but it is a brittle appreciation, one driven more by annoyance at the necessity of the a/c than a delight in the artificial cool it brings.
Two, I prefer fan-in-window cooling at night to that of the a/c. The fan, strategically aimed (well, okay, propped slant-wise in the window) at my bed, delivers an even cooling on a low hum throughout the night. The a/c, on the other hand, cycles on and off as the room warms then cools then warms then cools.
Not a nice even cool.
Three, I don’t like air conditioning.
What, have I mentioned that? Okay, um. . . yeah, so I don’t like a/c at night.
I’ve mentioned that, too? Well, the fan-in-window has worked the past couple of nights and has afforded me (or would have afforded me, had Jasper not been an asshole) delightful nights of sleep.
Four, I’m cheap. A fan costs less to run than a/c.
Five, it hasn’t, really, been that bad. I don’t like 90-degree weather, and while it’s been hot and humid, the weather has not devolved into the beastly, by which I mean: I can sit in my apartment with the fan and not constantly be thinking about how miserable I am.
Six, I’m teaching this month, so manage to be out of my apartment during the worst part of the day.
Seven, this heat wave is supposed to break tomorrow night. I can wait it out.
I’d really like to get through the summer without shoving the a/c unit into one of my few windows, but if the heat gets to the point where it immiserates rather than merely annoys me, then shove it I will.
The a/c into the window, I mean.
~~~
Warning: So begins the series of wailing-and-gnashing-of-teeth posts about summer. At some point there’ll be a post in which I announce I’ve cut off all my hair (probably titled ‘And then she cut off all my hair’)Â and one, in August, in which I announce “I hate everything”. No, I’m not planning these things: I just know they’re gonna happen.
AbsurdBeats 