HOT!

For the second day in a row it is absolutely BLAZIN' outside. This may be a normal phenomenon for some of you, but here in The Town, "..this is highly irregular, Captain". Yesterday, I took the train and the bus to work because not much is more miserable than sitting in grid-lock as the sun beats down on one side of your face. If you're wearing sunglasses, you end up looking like a real piece of work. Perhaps that tan line that goes from the corner of your eye, across your temple, and on over the top of your ear will make you look like you're moving real fast. Perhaps it will remind you of haircuts that we had back in the late 80s, and that some kids are trying to bring back today. I remember sitting in the kitchen at my boy Kimani's house for hours on a Friday afternoon as he carved artwork into the back of my fade with a set of Wahl clippers that were scorching hot from prolonged use.

The train was no cup of tea either, as it turned out. On both the way to and from work, we were forced to get off the train in Hayward and board the next one heading in that same direction due to some fires at the switching station earlier in the week. Unfortunately, this made the train rides extra crowded. I could no longer find a relatively remote seat to stretch out and enjoy my reading material unencumbered. Somebody scooted in to share my seat, forcing me up against the window. Somebody else was damn-near breathing down my neck in the seat behind me, and making matters worse kept sneezing. Some other cat standing in the aisle holding on to the rail was coughing. The good folks at BART haven't seen fit to enable any air conditioning units on this particular train, so there we sat, in the still air. I could feel the germs congregating like an airborne cesspool and waiting to close in on my like a boa constrictor. Oh how I wish I'd remembered to take a shot of, yes, Airborne this morning. At least the person next to me isn't wearing something sleeveless and brushing up against my arm like the poor guy in front of me whose sleeve is becoming drenched by perspiration from the chubby little arm belonging to the lady sitting next to him.

I discovered that my condo has no air conditioning. How could I have not noticed this after some 16 months of living here? Well, one of the great things about Oakland is that it has a built in air conditioner called The Bay, and I'm pretty close to it. When it's super hot everywhere else, I'm usually a good 10 to 15 degrees below that, so its not nearly as unbearable. It must've been near triple digits at some point during my first summer here last year, but they kept the a/c in the hallways pumpin' 24/7 so the whole building pretty much stayed cool. Of course, that was when not many people lived here so perhaps they decided that this was a precipitous waste of energy. On the flip side, however, now that there are many more residents and they are also playing the ridiculously high HOA fees that i'm paying, I think we can afford to dip into the pot a little bit to pay the bill. I guess I'll have to bring that up at the next HOA meeting. Meanwhile, I might need to get a fan or something, because my place never dipped below 80 degrees last night. It was like trying to fall asleep in a convection oven.

The heatwave isn't all bad though. It made San Francisco a special treat last night. When else can you stroll around the City after dark without a jacket?(Or during the day, for that matter!) It was so hot that I dared take it even a step further than that, wearing an entirely linen fit, and some sandals. Ordinarily this would be a sure way to freeze my...well, you know.