Todd Stadler's blog

summer in the city

"Man it's hot. It's like Africa hot. Tarzan couldn't take this kind of hot."

-Private Epstein, Biloxi Blues

I'm sitting in the office wearing shorts and a t-shirt, having just taken off my sandals in an attempt to let my feet breathe a bit more. It's hot.

They've installed a cadre of fans around the office, which they bought after yesterday's triple-digit (Fahrenheit) temperatures. People are fighting over which direction the fans should point. It's hot!

For the love of Pete, people's heads are exploding from the pressure created by rapidly expanding gasses given off as their brains sublimate! You'd better believe it's hot!!

Okay, it's not that hot, but the office did get up to 91°F in the office. Inside the office. Which, it goes without saying, is in the shade. And theoretically full of conditioned air.

Unfortunately, the air system in our office was designed by the Thermos corporation (or the designer of the McDLT, if that's your metaphorical bag), which is my corporately sponsored way of saying that when it's hot outside, the air conditioner takes a vacation. And who wouldn't? It's too hot to work!

Any of you Texas readers might chuckle to yourself that a former Texan like me has gone soft (or perhaps tepid) up here in the Northwest.

"How," the conversation might go, "can you complain about one day above 100°F when we have that all the time in Texas? And Texas is bigger than Oregon, too!"

Well, gentle reader, something else they have all the time in Texas is air conditioning. In their homes, in their offices, and in the cars they use to drive between those places.

I, on the other hand, find myself walking outside to get to and from work, and when I get home, there is no air conditioning, just a fan and some drawn shades.

And if I sound defensive, it's just that things in my adopted state aren't as large as they are in Texas. And that makes me grouchy.

I have a rule-of-thumb system for determining how hot it is in the office. I count the number of people passed out on the floor, multiply that number by two, and add it to 90, which gives the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit.

Of course, I'm kidding. Maybe if I counted the number of heat-induced "catnaps" ...

No, what I meant to say is, I count the number of times I hear, "it's hot" and add it to 20. That is the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit.

Excuse me while I go sit in an ice-filled sink.

[Editor's note: in the time it took me to get around editing and posting this article, it has gone and gotten all nice and stuff again. "Ha!" you may think. "What a sissy city Portland is, where it is not even 100°F for very long." Yes, you imaginary conversational foil, you win. But if you don't mind, I'm going to go enjoy our lovely weather before it starts raining or something.]

[Author's note: Don't be fooled. We at Cock-a-hoop aren't so big as to have distinct editorial and authorial positions. In fact, we at Cock-a-hoop aren't even a we. It's just me. And I don't even write the articles much any more. I just pipe Eliza's output through a sarcasm filter. This whole paragraph was generated in such a way.]