How I learned to Love the Heat

You can ask anyone. If I look at a picture of the sun that, say, a kindergartener drew in the corner of his paper with a smiley-face on it, I start to sweat. On one of our first dates, my wife cooked me dinner and we sat out on the roof of her house on Capitol Hill in the 90 degree heat, and I ran out of things to mop the perspiration off my face with; there are only so many times you can use the table cloth, or your shirt sleeve, or your date’s shirt sleeve, before she’s ready to call the whole thing off.

I hate the heat. I grew up in Pittsburgh, where we have some cold weather and some hot weather, but mostly cool, overcast weather. So perhaps I’m just not used to the heat.

Over the past decade or so, around this time of year I question why on earth I moved to DC. But last summer, and now continuing into this summer, I find I don’t mind it so much. In fact, I kind of like it. All I have to do is walk a little more slowly, especially when I find some shade.

Maybe it has to do with U Street. U Street is hot these days. Soft asphalt hot. But I actually kind of like it. I don’t mind it at all. And I’m beginning to really not like air conditioning. I’d rather sleep with a window open and a fan on, even if it is 85 degrees out. Air conditioning makes my nose do strange things, and if there’s one part of your body you don’t want doing strange things, your nose would be it. At least in the top 5.

And I don’t seem to sweat quite as much, either. I can’t figure it out. My wife is beginning to question if I’m the same man she married. (Maybe it goes back to the fact that it was 97 degrees out on our wedding day, so now I like the heat.) (Aaaaaawww!) Or perhaps as we age our sense of temperature (like our hearing and eye sight and tolerance for “kids today”) begin to fail us. Soon I’ll be able to make extra cash walking across beds of coals. That’s be nice.

Don’t need a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows

Over the winter, one of my favorite pastimes is yelling at television “meteorologists.” These people add a certain entertainment element to my life that I’d miss if I moved somewhere like San Diego where the weather is always perfect. I’m not blaming them for the cold weather, mind you, although I can’t think of anyone else who is more responsible for it. What I’m trying to do is hold them to a higher standard. Unfortunately, as I’ve learned from experience (and as my wife so frequently points out), they can’t hear me.

This morning, it was 11 degrees in DC. As I was making my coffee, I heard someone on NBC 4 make the observation that “if there is any water on any surface outside, it will be frozen.” Of course, this is the same person that they always pick to stand outside in front of a bank thermometer in the pre-dawn hours to report on just how cold it is, the same person who never wears a hat and gets the riveting footage of pedestrians walking down the street and stops motorists who invariably comment “it’s cold!” I believe they let her write her own copy.

Cutting back to the news rooms, Joe Krebs goes over a list of things you should do to keep warm: wear a coat. Wear a hat. Wear gloves. This bears no comments from me at all, except to ask, who, exactly, does Joe think watches NBC 4? Perhaps I need to change the station. I don’t think I’m a good fit.

Then there are the “average temperature” shenanigans. Two weeks ago with temperatures in the 50s, we were told over and over how our temperatures were “above average.” Now, with highs hovering around 20 degrees, we’re told they are now “below average.” The problem is (and this is a mathematical problem, so I apologize; I find using my toes helps quite a bit) that an “average temperature” is calculated (I assume) by adding up the high temperature from, say, all the February 6ths for the past 75 years, and then dividing that number by 75. Seems pretty scientific, doesn’t it? The only problem is, it may never be, and may never have been, the temperature that the resulting “average” turns out to be. In fact, there’s a good chance that there were more February 6ths when the temperature was wildly NOT the average temperature than February 6ths that it actually WAS the average temperature, rendering the idea of an “average temperature” meaningless. What good is it anyway? I don’t base any decision on how I’m going to dress or what activities I’m going engage in based on a historical “average” temperature. I’d look awfully silly most of the time if I did. (I mean, awfully sillier than I currently look most of the time.)

I’m not one of those people from a northern clime that guffaws at this region’s neurotic response to winter. (In fact, I make it a rule not to guffaw at anything. It distorts one’s features in such an undignified way.) People come from all over to live in this city. There’s no reason that someone born and raised in Florida should know how to drive in snow, just as there is no reason for someone born and raised in Pittsburgh should know how to, ah, drive in, ah, nice weather -- Okay, so people from the north are simply better drivers. But I refuse to guffaw. Anyway, we are obsessed with weather, and thank god we are. I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have it to blog about!