It’s all downhill from here
Happy Summer Solstice! Today, the longest day of the year.
Oh fine. The days start getting shorter. It gets colder. Winter is nigh.
Bah!
Oh, and Happy Father’s Day.
I’m not really cranky, honest!
Category: big weather
Stumped.
Well this kind of sucks.
I went to my random word generator, seeking blog ideas.
And it gives me a word that not only I don’t know, but the Dictionary application on OS X doesn’t know either.
The word is: eyne
Apparently, an archaic word meaning the plural of eye, oft used in poetry.
Or…a spot in France. But I think the word generator means the first definition.
The “complexity” chooser is set to “common”. I wouldn’t call eyne common.
Oh well.
Here we go:
But what do mine eyne see, but the fog of June gloom falling over me.
I can’t seem to buy a sunny day here in the Bay Area. And it’s depressing me. Today is windy and *cold* and, being of the desert, am not amused.
Then I keep reading NewMexiKen’s top lists of books, and find I’ve only read a few.
And then this whole eyne issue.
Not one of my better days….
Did you know…
…that today is National Health and Fitness Day?
I didn’t either, but it is.
So my own company decided to celebrate by hosting a lunchtime walk along a really pretty bayside trail near our offices.
When I told my favorite coworker about the planned event, he reminded me that employees of our company get *plenty* of exercise jumping to conclusions, walking away from responsibility, and running to line up first for the buffets.
While I couldn’t argue his point, I decided to take a walk anyway. Feeling cranky and amped up, a walk seemed like a nice idea.
It was walker’s choice, a one mile or two mile jaunt. I went ahead and chose two miles, strapped on my trainers and got to it.
Can’t say it was the nicest day for a walk. After being hotter than the hinges of hell for the past several days, the Bay Area Inversion (description here) has kicked in and today we get windy and cold.
Whatever.
Look, while most of my coworkers sat at their desks and ate hearty lunches in the cafeteria, I actually *did* something useful today.
I feel *so* smug too. I even took the company provided shuttle over to the start point in an effort to conserve fuel.
And I recycled the bottle from the water they gave me.
When the walk was done, I ate a salad.
If I keep this up, I’m going to be driving a Prius soon.
What?
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
Ok, to offset all this goodness I’ll have red meat and whiskey for dinner.
That ought to restore balance to the universe.
Questionable fashion choices
So. It’s expected to be about 90 degrees here today.
I know, I know. I hear my New Mexico peeps saying, “pish posh, 90 degrees is a walk in the park!” and you are right.
90 degrees in Albuquerque is a fine day for a walk/run/jog/picnic/bike ride/what have you.
90 degrees here is intolerable. Because of one thing…
Humidity.
See, the human body was made to be an evaporative cooling device. Just like a swamp cooler, really.
From the Wikipedia entry: “Evaporative cooling is a physical phenomenon in which evaporation of a liquid, typically into surrounding air, cools an object or a liquid in contact with it.”
Right. I sweat. The dry air evaporates it. I feel fresh as a daisy. A sweaty daisy, but a daisy, nonetheless.
In the Bay Area, due to this large body of water, the uh, you know, Bay, we have a bit of humidity. Not much, mind you. Not Georgia on a hot summer night or Singapore all year round. But enough.
Enough that my finely tuned machine, calibrated to the New Mexico climate, can’t properly obtain “fresh as a sweaty daisy” and I just obtain sweaty.
But that’s not the point of my discussion.
The point is…it’s due to be pretty hot today. “Pretty hot” is something of a rarity around here. We get maybe two weeks, when all totaled up each year, of “good lord it’s hot” days.
The rest of the time, the weather is temperate and mild.
Because of this, few homes and businesses have any sort of air conditioning. I know, right? I almost passed out when I first moved here. “You want to rent me an apartment WITHOUT air conditioning? Do you want me to *die*?!?!?”
So in order to stay cool, people go to their drawers and the back of their closets to withdraw their “warm weather” clothes.
Herein lies the problem. In New Mexico, it gets hot a lot. Everyone has at least ONE pair of serviceable shorts, usually two or more. Something that people wouldn’t be upset at being seen in public with you while you were wearing them.
Not so in the area where it doesn’t often get that hot.
Yes, the first “damn it’s hot” day of the year means seeing shorts that are a bit tight and frightfully short.
I don’t mean on a cute girl, I mean on the overweight middle aged dad-man whose legs haven’t seen the outside of pants legs in decades wearing the shorts he bought for Spring Break back in college, thirty years ago.
This morning I saw a woman walking down the street in a purple bathing suit with the elastic about shot, thus hardly supporting her ample upper parts. This was paired with some lycra bike shorts, scarcely concealing her ample lower parts. She also carried a pack of Kools and smoked profusely. But that’s a whole other blog post.
Unless you are actually ON a bike, I’d like not to see the bike shorts, please.
Look, not all of my stuff is great to look at, but I have the decency toward my fellow mankind to wear a pair of shorts that don’t crawl up my heiney as I walk. My skin is pale from too many days under office florescent lights, but I make an effort to keep cool and keep my dignity at the same time.
For the good of all mankind.
Stay cool out there, ya’ll.
Opening Day
And so, the 2009 baseball season is underway.
The major leaguers started early in the week.
But that’s not where I’m at.
I’m talkin’ about one lowly Single A.
Yeah baby.
The San Jose Giants kicked off their 142 game season in the Pacific Coast League with their home opener last night.
It was, perhaps, one of the strangest baseball encounters I’ve ever experienced.
And I’ve seen some weird sh*t.
To start with, the weather was was, what the indelicate call “pissing rain”. The not quite raining, not quite not. Just…dribbling.
For my home-squirrels in the 505/575 who come from a place where, when it rains, it means it, this phenomenon may not make sense to you.
Imagine those misters they have at Hooters. Only as big as the sky, unrelenting, and without the desert dryness to evaporate that water.
Close enough.
So it was Hooters misting all night long…and cold…and not very baseball-y weather.
Pretty much, the not really capacity crowd thinned out over the course of the game, leaving only the die hards to carry it to the end.
Which would be both me and The Good Man.
We stepped under cover for the third and fourth innings to indulge in bbq-sauce-up-to-your-ears tasty ribs and came out of there recharged and ready.
When you’ve endured several hours of cold soaking rain, it does something to your brain.
So as most people left, and us weirdos starting losing our minds, it got really fun.
Best moment will take some backstory.
Every game, the San Jose announcer designates a player on the opposing team as the “beer batter”. If the San Jose pitcher strikes out that batter, then beer is half price for the next half inning.
Needless to say, people cheer pretty damn hard for a strikeout.
Usually, they end the beer batter promotion in the sixth inning.
So, round about the seventh inning last night…we, the looneys in the crowd decided to dub that same opposing batter the hot chocolate batter (it was freaking cold!). Cheering went up. Someone yelled, “C’mon, daddy needs marshmallows!”
That damn beer hot chocolate batter would NOT just take a swing. Poor sport.
And then, for some reason, in the eighth inning, the announcer played the usual beer batter song and dubbed the guy the ‘apple juice batter of the game, as sponsored by Martinelli’s’. I don’t know if that was a legit promotion, but then all of us started hollering for our apple juice.
As the beer batter stood at the plate, we screamed “aaaaaaaple juuuuuice!” Damnit if that guy just wouldn’t strike out for us! No, he kept foulin’ ’em off! So I yelled “I’ll share mine with you!” No, he wasn’t to be swayed. I even offered to *give* him my apple juice. Considering I was sitting in the third row behind the plate in a nearly empty stadium, I KNOW he heard my offer.
But no, instead of sipping my apple juice, b–tard hit a rope out to center.
A cold soaked to the bone crowd couldn’t even get an apple juice. That ain’t right.
But damn did we have fun!
And yes, the Albuquerque Dukes pennant is still painted on the wall at Muni Stadium and I touched it for luck, like usual! Worked too! We won 7-1!
Tonight, I think I’ll stick to the couch and a blanket and my feline (who I’ve finally forgiven) and baseball on the television.
But I may be prompted to yell “aaaaaaapple juuuuuuuice” at a hitter who needs to strike out. : shrug :
