Sometimes a photo can paint the situation better than words. My house in Ashland, Oregon, today – June 27, 2021.
Temp
Sunday’s Theme Music
5:36 AM, 8:51 PM, sunrise, sunset, yesterday, today, tomorrow.
Heat is today’s word. Heat. Hot. Burning. The valley reached 102 degrees F yesterday. 110 is forecast for today. We’re not expected to drop below 100 for our highs until Friday, when we’ll only reach 99. During the night, the lows will be in the low to mid-seventies. Last night, it was 83 at 10 PM.
We went dancing last night, place Lake of the Woods. Meeting up with friends, we ate sandwiches and barbeque, drank beer, wine, and water, and danced to a band on the lake shore under the pines. Up in the mountains, comfortable temperatures in the high 80s cradled us.
While a friend and I checked out the water, we discovered a bottle in the water. Retrieved it to dispose of right. Sting and the rest of The Police serenaded me with “Message in A Bottle” from 1979 for a bit thereafter. I share it with you.
Test negative, stay positive, wear masks as needed, and get the vax. Cheers
Tuesday’s Theme Music
At 5:38 AM, a bluebird dove onto the patio and shouted, “Sunup! Sunup! Time to get your butt up!”
A nearby cat gave his whiskers a wash. “Think I’ll sleep the day away, getting up at 2040 to start my play.”
With temperatures expected to pierce 100 degrees F, the cat has the right idea on this Tuesday, June 1, 2021. I’ll continue with my room painting inside the house (yeah, can’t do that outside the house, now can I?) and avoid the outdoors until it’s cooler, say, six PM. Then I’ll head for the hills for a walk.
My wife and I were complaining about how much laundry we generate as we folded yet another load. “We could go nude,” she suggested.
“Last time I did that, I caused a general uproar,” I replied, garnering an eye roll.
I continued painting the great room yesterday, cutting in along the ceiling (didn’t do a good job, I must say), windows, fireplace, outlets…the list goes on. Music in my head played. I was stuck on one song. You’d think, end of May, beginning of June, unofficial start of summer, etc, would influence my brain’s choice. And you would be incorrect.
No, my brain began singing a 1975 Grand Funk song, “Bad Time”.
I'm in love with the girl that I'm talking about I'm in love with the girl I can't live without I'm in love but I sure picked a bad time To be in love To be in love Well, let her be somebody else's queen I don't want to know about it There's too many others that know what I mean And that's why I got to live without it I'm in love with the girl I'm talking about I'm in love with the girl I can't live without I'm in love but I feel like I'm wearin' it out I'm in love but I must have picked a bad time to be in love A bad time to be in love A bad time to be in love A bad time to be in love
h/t to Lyrics.com
Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask, get the vax. Cheers
Tuesday’s Theme Music
Yesterday was in the mid-nineties. Today we’re looking at ninety-eight to one hundred degrees. Heat warnings out, etc..
Can’t complain too much. Had a scorcher back in May, and thought, oh, no, here comes the heat. But June turned mild and rainy. Different from what we usually get, and tres acceptable.
I’m not an air conditioning fan. Prefer not to run it in the house. Seems like a sledgehammer approach to things. I don’t usually run it in the house until the temp inside goes to eight-three. To do this, I cool the house at night, right? Sure. Everyone’s with that. But last night didn’t cool too much (seventy at eleven) (that’s degrees at o’clock PM). The house was comfortable through and it’s comfortable now, but, well, we’re looking at eighty by eleven (temp/time, AM).
Speaking of time and clocks (or writing about them), I was thinking about counter-clockwise. I was following some instructions which used that statement. Which cause wonder, what’d they say before clocks about turning things? I suppose, reflecting on technology, not many things were turned before clocks, and they just said, left or right.
Also, though, kids. Their clocks are digital. Aren’t they? Are they? Don’t have children, so I don’t know what’s in school, and whether that’s still taught. Kind of assumed it wasn’t, since they’re dropped the whole cursive writing business.
But if they’re not shown standard round clocks, being told about turning something counter clockwise must cause a minor brain freeze.
Back to the music. For today’s heat, the theme is “Heat Wave” as covered by Linda Rondstadt back in the last century. The original song was excellent, and there are many terrific versions, but Linda’s version popped up in 1975, so I associate it with driving around and partying as a young adult.
Let’s go with it.
Friday’s Theme Music
Courtesy of Martha and the Vandellas (1963) and Mother Nature (2019), a little “Heat Wave”.
Update Note: Sorry, I was time-shifting and lost track of the days.
Today’s Theme Music
With the thermometers teasing one hundred four degrees, I was returning home in the car. The DJ said, “This song is about air conditioning.”
Air conditioning? I puzzled what he could mean.
He continued, “This is “Need You Tonight.” With this weather as hot as it is, they have to be referring to air conditioning.”
Here it is, INXS, from nineteen eighty-seven.
Oh, The Heat
It’s hot and I am compelled by Internet Law to write about this heat.
This heat, what, 105, 107? It’s just ruining things. Look what it’s doing to my electric bill when I run my air-conditioning. And the water bill when I water the lawn and plants. Yikes, you should see, you really should. It’s unbelievable.
It’s too hot to do anything but sit. It even affects my Internet connection, can you believe it? I’m serious, when the heat gets over 97, the Internet connection becomes spotty, don’t ask me why, but it really makes it so hard to post anything or find out who’s doing anything. THANK GOD for my iPhone!
It’s so hot, I can barely move. Even when I don’t move, I’m sweating. Look, I’m sweating now, and this is inside, in the shade. We’ve put up awnings and umbrellas on the porches and patios, and there is the pool for a cool dip but even these reliefs are so momentary because you wouldn’t believe the breeze, it’s like fresh out of a pizza oven. Speaking of which, we wanted to grill pizzas tonight but I told them, it’s just too hot for us to do that. Let’s go to a fun restaurant with air conditioning and spoil ourselves with fine food and drinks.
Otherwise, I’m just going to have to sit inside and read in the air conditioning today, and what fun is that? That’s hardly living. We should go away somewhere until this heat wave ends. Like Vegas! You check for some flights and I’ll look for a room. The Bellagio! I love it there!
Road trip! I am literally so excited. I can’t wait until this heat wave ends.
Three Degrees
Three degrees can be a lot, and not much. It can be a shrug or a killer, self-actualization achieved, or another day of determined trying, the perfect puffed pastry crust and advancement to the next round with a handshake from Paul, or dead last, saying good-bye.
Three degrees further north, and you’ve entered another world. That can be huge. North Korea and South Korea. Not the countries’ real names, but their nicknames. You probably recognized them. Three degrees off the tip of southern Florida, and you better be airborne, on a boat or a platform, or you’re in a watery situation.
At 42 degrees north, you can be on the California – Oregon border. Three degrees south and your taxes are much greater, along with the costs of real estate, the average income, and the likelihood that you’re a college graduate and are more liberal. At 120 west, you’re on the California – Nevada border, if you’re north of 39 degrees latitude but still south of 42 degrees, and the differences those two states embody. South of those coordinates, and you’re still in California at 120 degrees west, all the way down to Santa Barbara, where you enter the ocean.
Three degrees of effort, luck and success is sometimes the difference between being average, good, and great – between winning a gold medal and being back in the pack – or average, fair and poor. Same could be in the degree of decorating taste. One person’s stripped zebra rug and red walls is another person’s horror. It’s a matter of degrees.
Three degrees was the difference in the high between Tuesday and Wednesday at my house. Tuesday reached 96. Wednesday, cooler, at 93. What a difference it felt. 93, with a light breeze, offered comfort in the shade. 96’s shade was a brick oven’s shade. Today is forecast to mock them both, at 103 F. We’ll see if that three degrees over 100 is realized, or felt.
Three Degrees is a good but not fabulous Oregon Pinot Noir. Supposed to have won some awards but would not win them from me. Different tastes, and all that.
Three Degrees is also a Portland restaurant. They don’t explain where the three degrees come in, but they mention food, drink and people. Or is it because they’re now between six degrees of separation, right in the middle of a chain, between a friend of a friend of a friend?
Three degrees is half of the six degrees of freedom, which is about movement, and not personal freedoms. But if you think about it, we can apply the six degrees of freedom to personal and political freedoms and develop an analogy to six degrees of freedom in mechanical motion.
Or anything else. I’m writing about degrees here, and what differences they do and do not make, and how arbitrary they sometimes seem, and yet what an impact they can have. Your thoughts on it may depend upon your degree of interest.
Michael Seidel, writer 