Hot!

Michael and I have been watching with great interest as the the thermometer has been climbing higher and higher over the past few days. This afternoon, according to Yahoo news, the temperature in our neighborhood was 94 degrees as I was leaving campus, where I'd been grateful all day for the air conditioning in the Loft and my classroom. (If anyone who reads this site is in North Seattle, I highly recommend heading to the NSCC library for a few hours--free, cool place to sit and read. Stop by the Loft and talk to the tutors while you're there. We're all bored, because everyone else has noticed the nice weather and is skipping off campus early to go to the lake!) As I walked out of the library and a blast of heat hit me in the face, I was suddenly reminded of my trip to the California desert last summer. It doesn't feel like Seattle at all! As I write this, around 9:00 tonight, the temperature is still 86 degrees, and I swear it's hotter than that in here, with the westward facing windows and a living room that's been soaking up the sun all afternoon.

Before all of you people who live in hot places start to smirk and leave comments expressing your superiority to us wimpy Seattle people, let me remind you that you live in places that are equipped to deal with heat. It's only a tiny percentage of private homes in Seattle that have air conditioning, and our apartment building certainly doesn't have any. Seattle is officially under a "severe weather alert" from the National Weather Service, which says:

"THE HEAT WAVE CONTINUES THIS AFTERNOON WITH TEMPERATURES REACHING
INTO THE MID 90S TO NEAR 100 DEGREES. THIS IS 20 TO 25 DEGREES
ABOVE NORMAL. THE COMBINATION OF HIGHER TEMPERATURES AND HIGHER
RELATIVE HUMIDITY WILL CREATE VERY UNCOMFORTABLE AND DANGEROUS
CONDITIONS ACROSS THE AREA. TEMPERATURES WILL SLOWLY COOL BACK
DOWN INTO THE 60S OVERNIGHT.

AN EXCESSIVE HEAT WARNING MEANS THAT A PROLONGED PERIOD OF
DANGEROUSLY HOT TEMPERATURES WILL OCCUR. HOT TEMPERATURES WILL
CREATE A DANGEROUS SITUATION IN WHICH HEAT ILLNESSES ARE LIKELY.
DRINK PLENTY OF FLUIDS...AVOID OVER EXERTION...AND CHECK UP ON
RELATIVES AND NEIGHBORS."

Michael and I have eight strategically places fans that are sort of circulating the air around the apartment, but it's still pretty stuffy in here. We've practically been living in the pool for the past few days (thank goodness our building has a pool--another big rarity in Seattle).

Tonight, my dad is in town for a short visit, and he took Hope and Peter and I (poor Michael has to work until 10:00 tonight) out for pizza at a little pub Hope and Peter like in the U-District. A big sign on the door as we walked in announced "air conditioning and ice-cold beer," and after even the short walk across the parking lot, we were happy to feel the chilly air when we opened the door. Any of you in Seattle should definitely consider the Northlake Tavern and Pizza House--yummy pizza and cheap beer. A perfect combination for a hot summer day (even if I don't like beer, the rest of our party assured me it was great). And a couple more hours of air conditioning was definitely a plus in my day!

I'll leave to pick Michael up from work in a little while, and I'm going to have to see if I can convince him that ice cream would be a perfect dinner for him--and a perfect late-night snack for me!