Extreme Heat Alert

July 25th, 2006 by Potato

Well, it’s another extreme heat alert day here in Ontario, so air conditioned buildings are opened up to the public/homeless to prevent heat stroke and the like. People are encouraged not to undertake strenuous activity outside in the sun, and all the rest that the heat entails. Far away, some debate rages over whether global warming exists at all — let alone what we should do about it.

But I’m going to talk about the heat on a more personal note. I don’t care for the heat, not at all. I used to; but then, I used to be skinny.

I’ve got a lot of trouble sleeping in the heat and humidity lately, even with my air conditioner running. Of course, with the heat this bad, I can feel the oppresive heat draft coming in through the partially opened door (only my bedroom is air conditioned, and I have to leave the door open a bit for the cat).

Beyond that, though, I’ve got to worry about what it was that got me so fat in the first place: food. The stinking heat and humidity is just destroying the food in my apartment, turning everything mouldy really quickly. I usually have a sixth sense about that sort of thing, throwing leftovers out before they ever get the chance to go really bad. But lately I’ve been seeing spots of mould forming on, and in some cases even completely taking over, my food before I get around to tossing it. Icky. Also, and perhaps even worse than the mould, is that the heat is melting all the chocolate in my kitchen. My Twix bar came apart when I opened the package, leaving me with a mediocre cookie and some gooey chocolate & caramel to lick up. I picked up a Toblerone (that I thought was on sale, but didn’t ring up as such) today, and when I took it out of the cardboard, all the little triangles went smoosh in the foil. It’s a real shame, because most chocolate isn’t as good after being melted like that and then resolidified in the freezer. I need to remember that for the future, and either keep my chocolate in the fridge in the first place, or at least in my room that is air conditioned for part of the day. (Last year, it was August before I finally started remembering to do that).

Lots of people are talking about books lately, so I was going to put up a list of the books on mine, but then it occured to me that “the medium is the message” — while it’s true that the large number of sci-fi and fantasy books would give you a pretty clear idea of my personality, the clutter and disarray of the shelf would provide an even better idea. Not only do I have some books that just don’t fit on the bit of shelf that isn’t dedicated to school books, so they’re sort of thrown on top, in front of, or even behind the other books, I also have a shelf that is soley devoted to junk and clutter. Matches, spare keys, change for the laundry machine, my hat, duct tape — you name it, and it’s probably been misplaced there at some point, and taking up valuable book-displaying room.

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