melting brain cells and civilized amenities

Even the Texas cows are hot!

As I staggered home from walking the dog yesterday in the relatively cool (for us ) 5:00 pm 96 degree 82% humidity late afternoon, I kept having visions / hallucinationsof my brain cells and any coherent thoughts they might contain, melting and pouring out of my ears sort along the lines of Salvidor Dali's painting of the melting clocks. It is bloody hot.

If you understand that the formal temperatures listed on weather sites come from thermometers which are generally hanging in open shade with free air circulation, then you understand that the real temperature that most of us are moving about in is 5-10 degrees higher. That means that we are in week 6 of triple digit "feels like" temperatures. Up in Denton, near Dallas, poor Marie is in the fourth week of real triple digits, feels like quadruple digit temperatures.

I haven't been doing much road biking as even when I drag myself out of bed for an earlier start trying to beat the heat it is already in the high 80's and jumps into the 90's as soon as the sun clears the horizon. I am content to ride my bike the three miles to the gym and back. The sensation of riding into the heat and humidity is similar to the sensation of jumping fully clothed into a pool of warm spit. Even the breeze of my movement only piles more moisture into an already soaked shirt and onto an already dripping skin. At least I arrive at the gym fully warmed up!

In spite of the heat, I have had several nice moments recently.

The first was when I went into a store looking for workout clothes and found two pairs of light nylon cargo pants with zip off legs. Not only are they of a very light wicking material, but they actually fit and were 40% off. Since I am a reluctant shopper at best, this was a moment of victory in more ways than one. When I got home and unzipped the legs I found another very nice amenity. The zipperand zipper tab on the right leg was red while the left was blue. Probably only somebody else who has spent a half hour trying to get a zipper to match the correct leg on a pair a cargo pants would appreciate this but it ranks right up there with the genius who finally decided that clothing labels could be stamped into the back of shirts rather than sewn in on irritating tags which stick out and leave itchy little stubs when you cut them out.

A visit to the dentist was a second nice moment. He is a nice old fashioned guy who remembers each of his patients, asks about members of the family, remembers that I am a bike rider and asks about the riding, appreciates that I hate novocaine and will let me decide if I need it or not, is a great believer in maintaining the teeth and gums you have rather than replacing them with caps or falsies, and takes a proactive stance on preventative maintainence. So I had a quick and painless cleaning , one small crack on a front tooth and a thin spot in the enamel on another tooth repaired. I was in and out in a half hour and he called later in the day to make sure that my teeth were feeling ok. That's old fashioned care and service which is in short supply these days.

And finally, the sunflowers are loving the heat and the sun.