Friday, September 10, 2004
Pray for rain
Before the end of summer (which for Baton Rouge isn't really until late October), I feel I really need to detail the horrors of the weather in the past few months.
I haven't taken a hot shower for more than three months. Each morning I wake up, open the bathroom door, recoil at the blast of heat released and sprint for the relief of a cool shower (it would be cold except that there is no cold tap water in summer). I towel off but, really, there's little point as I'm sweating by the time I leave the bathroom. Then, after I put on my ridiculously overly formal work clothes (company policy requires a shirt and tie) I race to get into my air-conditioned car before I start sweating through my clothes (I usually fail).
Summer here is really a constant hop from air conditioned building to air conditioned building, though in my job I often don't have that luxury. The only comfort to talking to people at a crime scene while clearly sweating through your clothes is that everybody is sweating through their clothes and it's generally acceptable.
As you soon as you go outside down here, you are covered with a layer of sweat and you simply learn to live with a constant grimy film during the day.
Night is little better (although it is improving with the shortening days). In August there was many a night where the mercury stayed above 80 even at 2 a.m., making gin and tonics that much more key to an enjoyable porch experience.
Summer has it's own smell, too, and that smell is rotting. The other night, as is common, the entire town smelled dead vegetation, which is somehow fitting for a city decaying on many levels. When the rotting smell is not overpowering, the nearby Exxon refinery fills in dutifully, causing the town to smell like every morbidly obese Baton Rougean is simultaneously paying the gastric consequences of the three mufalettas they had for lunch.
The paradox of summer weather here is that the only way to have a bearable climate and air that doesn't smell like death or flatulence is for thunderstorms to come through, cool things off and clean out the atmosphere. So pray for shitty weather, I guess.
I haven't taken a hot shower for more than three months. Each morning I wake up, open the bathroom door, recoil at the blast of heat released and sprint for the relief of a cool shower (it would be cold except that there is no cold tap water in summer). I towel off but, really, there's little point as I'm sweating by the time I leave the bathroom. Then, after I put on my ridiculously overly formal work clothes (company policy requires a shirt and tie) I race to get into my air-conditioned car before I start sweating through my clothes (I usually fail).
Summer here is really a constant hop from air conditioned building to air conditioned building, though in my job I often don't have that luxury. The only comfort to talking to people at a crime scene while clearly sweating through your clothes is that everybody is sweating through their clothes and it's generally acceptable.
As you soon as you go outside down here, you are covered with a layer of sweat and you simply learn to live with a constant grimy film during the day.
Night is little better (although it is improving with the shortening days). In August there was many a night where the mercury stayed above 80 even at 2 a.m., making gin and tonics that much more key to an enjoyable porch experience.
Summer has it's own smell, too, and that smell is rotting. The other night, as is common, the entire town smelled dead vegetation, which is somehow fitting for a city decaying on many levels. When the rotting smell is not overpowering, the nearby Exxon refinery fills in dutifully, causing the town to smell like every morbidly obese Baton Rougean is simultaneously paying the gastric consequences of the three mufalettas they had for lunch.
The paradox of summer weather here is that the only way to have a bearable climate and air that doesn't smell like death or flatulence is for thunderstorms to come through, cool things off and clean out the atmosphere. So pray for shitty weather, I guess.
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You are right to call me a crybaby, but wrong about what Southerners will think. People down here are the biggest fucking weather-whiners I've ever met. I've talked to people who have lived here their whole lives, sweated through 50 summers and still bother to comment on the heat. And yeah, the mosquitoes are rough. More importantly, update your blog.
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