Official temperatures mean nothing to me

I like what I do for a living but as with any job it has it’s bad side. For me, right now, it’s the heat. Half of my time is spent in hotels or condos. The other half is spent outdoors.

In the latter case, after I’ve taken care of one of these accounts, I teeter and stumble back to my truck which has the oxygen supply and cold air. As soon as I get the air going and I’m able to breathe again I bury my face in a terry towel and aim the vents at my head and into my shirtsleeves. Then I usually hear the weather man or woman on the radio tell me that the official temperature for the day at that moment is 97 degrees. I say “bullshit” into the terry towel because I know it’s way hotter where I am than where they got that reading.

How about telling us what the actual temperature it is in the city rather than what it is out at the airports or whatever other distant locations they are taken. What good does that do? Why don’t they take a reading on Gessner in Spring Branch at 3:00 in the afternoon? In neighborhoods like that I’ve seen it get all the way up to 112 degrees this summer. If you add to this a lack of breeze and our constant 80% (or more) humidity and you don’t take precautions, you could actually find yourself waking up in a hospital bed with a saline drip attached to your arm.

97 degrees my ass.

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Good boy!

Die!

I think I hate a biting mosquito more than I do an ugly three inch cockroach. You can trap and catch a filthy cockroach. You can even keep it prisoner and torture it. But mosquitos are stealthy and they are swarmers. They don’t run from you. They seek you.

My seasonal clock is ticking and it’s telling me to get back out to the beach. I spend many nights out on the beach this time of year and mosquitos are the only thing that will actually make me throw all my shit back in the bed of my truck and leave. Not even the lack of food, water or beer is as serious as a swarm of half-starved mosquitos. Usually, if you get into some wind they don’t bother you. That’s why I’ve slept many nights at the edge of the water and awakened with my fold-out chair half sunken in the sand with the surf moving in and out of my shorts.

The only thing more miserable than being eaten alive by a massive swarm of mosquitos is to be covered head and hair to toe in that nasty, toxic smelling repellant. I usually face the wind, shut my eyes as tight as I can, aim the can at my face and push the button. I cover my entire body until I’m either soaked or the can peters out. Being covered in poison is uncomfortable and not at all conducive to enjoying a night half naked on the beach.

My Dad sent me an interesting email today. It was, of course, an email that had been forwarded probably 500,000 times among he and his generation who love posting in size 36 font and changing colors every sentence. But it wasn’t another list of grievances about how this generation are all a bunch of marshmallows nor was it another fake numerical list supposedly written by Bill Cosby or George Carlin (in super-large font and in several colors).

No, this might just be helpful. It said that plain old Lysterine repels mosquitos. The mouthwash. The woman who initially sent the email cited several instances that proved it. She said that they put it in a bottle and sprayed it over lawn furniture, picnic tables, door jambs and each other. She swears by it. I’ll try it. Anything is better than Deet.

I won

I beat hurricane Ike in a race to Houston. Just barely though. My advantage was that I got on a plane and zoomed back home at the last minute. In my last post I mentioned that I was in Florida. Before I left Houston the storm was just entering the gulf. I didn’t feel good about leaving but I had to. I really needed to be in Florida and it looked like the storm was on a path south of here. Once I was in Florida I was so busy that I never saw any news and I wasn’t aware of the north-western turn it was taking.

Because I missed my flight out of Houston I had to stay and work an extra day in Florida. That extra day was Thursday the 11’th. That day I got a call from my Dad asking me if I was prepared for the storm and if not to get over to his house before it hit. Then I got a call from my ex-wife, the panic queen, asking me the same thing. All I could tell them was that I had booked a flight the night before for that very day, September 11 at 5:30 PM. They didn’t have any encouraging words for me. All they did was stress me out even more.

I got out of of the airport Friday night about 10:30 PM (we were grounded in Tampa because of lightening) and headed home. I stopped at the store next to my apartment and got some beer and a shitload of tuna, sardines and crackers. That’s all they had. Even though I had early Saturday to get whatever was left on the grocery store shelves, I wasn’t taking any chances like I did before Rita.

Saturday morning I brought in 30 gallons of water, 2 bags of charcoal, more non-perishables, ice and a little more beer which maxed out my ice chest. Please understand that hurricanes are like bowling, billiards, darts and fishing; They just aren’t the same without beer. It’s crucial.

I lost all power about 1:00 AM that night. I expected it. I spent the next four days staring out the window every day and reading by oil lamp at night. This was only a minor inconvenience. I still have food and a place to live. Those on Galveston Island and Boliver are suffering. Most of them have neither. I know what that feels like after riding out hurricane Celia in 1970.