Crazy from the heat

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Everyone blogs about the weather, but no one really does anything about it.

Today, the first day of summer, it hit 100 degrees here. Well, out there — here, it’s a comfortable 73 degrees.

When I saw it was 95 degrees and sprinkling outside at 8 in the evening, I knew it was a hot day.

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Heat doesn’t really bother me. I drove around in the middle of the afternoon with the windows rolled down and no A/C. That’s typical for me.

Of course, having a cold drink with me helped a bit.

I didn’t even notice we were in triple digits. And it’s the first time in six years that this city has hit 100 or higher.

No, I wasn’t born on the sun.

Hot weather can be a killer. When people try to guess which weather phenomenon causes the most deaths a year, they assume it’s either hurricanes, tornadoes or blizzards.

But it’s heat. A few old people here, a few poor people there. It adds up.

Tornadoes wipe out 40 people at a time and leave dramatic wreckage. And of course, we can’t forget about the spate of hurricanes in the past few years down in Florida and along the Gulf Coast.

Hot weather does it every time. It preys on the weak, those without air conditioners or fans or iced tea.

Northern cities take it pretty hard. We’re used to melt-your-face weather down South, but one weeklong heat wave and they’re dropping like flies in Chicago, Boston and New York. Plus, many of those places don’t have (or really need) air conditioners.

I thought I was going to lose it a couple of months ago when my home’s air conditioner went on the fritz. At first, I believed I could, ahem, weather it. But one day later, I’m begging for a repair tech to come out and fix the blasted thing.

So much for toughness.

The punchline? I didn’t turn on the AC for another two weeks, because the day it was repaired, the weather turned cool again.

Mother Nature, you’re a fickle mistress.

As am I.

If it stays this hot, look for the riots to begin around Independence Day. And if it stays this dry, look for the fires to spring up in the suburbs over the mountain.

I don’t mind. I’m cool like that.

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