Summer Hibernation

Okay, so I know just a few weeks ago I posted in anger about Austinites challenging me over the weather (however, I continue to stand behind what I wrote) but I must take a few moments of your time to write about the current heat wave here in Austin.

Not that it sucks, because this is a given, but because it has turned on my hibernation mode that once only peeked out during the coldest month of winter. Currently I only go outside to get to my car or to another air-conditioned building, much like my summer life in Kuwait. When I am not at work I am at home, where recently all I want to do is sleep. Right after I publish this post I am going to have a little lie-down despite the fact I left bed only three hours ago. I want to be productive, perhaps even active, but more than anything I want a damn nap. I think the temperature is supposed to dip down into the 90s later this week. Maybe then I'll wake up from my long summer's nap and brave the 100-meter walk to the mailbox. Until then, I will pull my covers over my eyes and pretend it's 30F outside - though, at this point, I'd accept 80.

To Austinites re: the weather

Shut the fuck up.

No, really: I am tired of you trying to one-up me on the badassness of the heat. If you ask me how I'm handling the heat and I respond, Well, it's hot, but I lived in Kuwait and LA before this so, you know, I'm used to it, I am not trying to undersell the reality that yes, it is hot here. I am merely letting you know that Austin, and Texas, has not defeated me with the summer heat - the job market has been much more successful in murdering my hopes and dreams.

You, dear Austinite, do not have to give me reasons why here is so much worse than there. For example, me: "I lived in Kuwait before Austin, so I got used to the heat." You: "Oh . . . yeah, well, there you don't have the humidity."

Ah, how little you know, because I have swum through the air in Kuwait and Dubai and, in order to be completely honest, have experienced humidity in Maryland that far exceeds anything Austin has thrown my way. One summer, years ago, my sister and I were at a minor league baseball game and, being it was baseball, we bought cotton candy - which then proceeded to melt merely because of contact with the air. The butter-thick, humid-ass air. A few years a college friend of mine bemoaned the loss of the tomatoes in her garden: they had rotted, you see, on the vine because the humidity was so thick. That's what I consider uncomfortably humid, but I don't bother to mention this to anyone here because, again just being honest, I don't care.

I don't care that it's hot or that it's humid or that life sucks so badly for five months out of the year, because I didn't pick Austin for the weather. Hell, I don't even know what I am doing here but it is certainly not because I was faced with the reality of leaving Kuwait and thought, I just can't get enough of this desert-y feeling! I don't like it, but I don't believe you particularly enjoy it, either, considering we deal with the heat exactly the same: stay indoors with the A/C running and do not venture outside until well-past dusk.

So unless baiting me with talk about the weather will miraculously make rain fall or a cold front move in, shut the fuck up. Or I will slap you in the face with a breakfast burrito. A delicious breakfast burrito, locally made and as hot as the Texas sun: lukewarm.

Whether the Weather: Dry Heat vs. Humidity

With Ramadan right around the corner and the wind making a Mary Poppins-esque turn, the weather here has changed from a heat blown up from the depths of hell to a more tropical humid nightmare. While I could take the time to figure out how it can be 110F with 80% humidity in the desert without anyone of those elements canceling the other two out, I am instead reminded of something my father told me on my first trip to Vegas. It was the beginning of August and, as you might expect, it was insanely hot. This was also my first experience in a desert, or dry, environment of any sort and having grown up accustomed to suffocating humidity, the heat of Vegas was having its effect, leaving me constantly dehydrated (I hardly drank any alcohol because I was always so desperate for water) and, well, hot. When I mentioned this to my dad during a phone call home he told me that I couldn't be having a problem because, after all, the weather in Vegas was "only a dry heat." At the time I found it odd that my father, over in Maryland, could be telling me, the one in Nevada, that the I couldn't possibly be noticing the heat because it was "dry" - and I still find that notion incredibly absurd.

Yes, humidity can be miserable; a brief visit to the Southeast USA during summer will assure you of that fact. You step outside and almost instantly become damp not because of sweat, but because of the moisture in the air. If you buy cotton candy at a baseball game there's a good chance it will start to melt before you can eat it. Air conditioning fights in vain against the onslaught, always leaving you with a feeling of being slightly moist despite the 75F temperature inside. And of course, the heat doesn't dissipate at night but instead hangs there, suffocating, oppressive. I have a friend whose vegetables rotted on the vine one summer the humidity was so bad. There's no question it's hot because you can feel it, sticking to you.

The addage for dry heat, on the other hand, is that you don't feel it; apparently without moisture guiding your senses your body will be oblivious to the furnace you're standing in. This is absolute bullshit. The hint is in the title: DRY HEAT. Have you ever opened an oven door and, as the blast of hot air washes over your face, thought to yourself, "Man, I wish I knew if the oven was ready because I can't feel a thing"? Did you know that it's difficult to breathe in 125F weather because the air is, literally, burning your lungs? The same effect happens to your eyeballs when the windblows. When I first moved to LA, also during that first Vegas trip, I would get spontaneous nosebleeds because my sinuses were so dry. Or ask my husband the joys of working in the Kuwait desert where it easily reaches 134F and tools cannot be left outside because touching them, even while wearing gloves, will seriously burn your hand. Because it's fucking hot.

Yes, I know that the body's natural cooling system works better in dry heat because the sweat can actually evaporate, but when the heat gets over, say, 105F then your cooling mechanisms go into overdrive. This leads to faster dehydration and delirium caused by said dehydration. During the summer in the SF Valley the temperature would reach 104F in the shade, which offered no respite from the heat but merely safeguarded you from getting a sunburn. Oh, and the fact that dry weather leaves you feeling like a raisin and looking like a piece of chalk you're so ashy. There have been days I've drunk over a gallon of water and still felt thirsty and sluggish.

I performed a quick online search of "dry heat vs humidity" and found several forums related to people moving from one type of weather to the other and it seems the majority are overwhelmingly in favor of dry heat. After all, you can sit outside without becoming drenched in sweat after only 5 minutes! Though considering the pro-dry heaters tend to refer to coastal SoCal in their defense I think what they are actually enjoying is a Mediterranean climate. And I admit, when it's 90F and dry the heat is actually manageable and even be pleasant. It certainly feels hot, but it's not too bad. However, I can assure you that these same dry heat proponents have never experienced heat above 115F or even 110F. These increments may seem small but trust me, you feel every degree as it increases. 120F feels different than 115 and waaaay worse than 100, so much so that I cheered the arrival of humid weather.

Seth and I went for a walk yesterday around 6:30pm, about the same time I would normally go out because it's actually cooler then than at 5am. Though we were quickly covered in a combination of sweat and air moisture we both felt content because we could breathe easily, our blood didn't feel as though it was boiling and the air didn't smell like burning. It was nice. It was a relief. So the next time you hear the phrase "but it's a dry heat" please smile and do everyone a favor: punch them in the face.

Shout-out from K-Dub!

I have several thoughtful and perhaps thought-provoking posts I am working on, but it seems every time I try to think of two thoughtful sentences in a row my brain crashes. Instead of leaving you weeping in your beds, missing my pointless rambling and desperately wondering when my next post will be (all five of you who read this) I decided to give a quick update on life here in the K-Dub. Happily, this includes photos.

Views of the Persian/ Arabian Gulf are beautiful, if monotonous. I like to gaze upon it and think, "I could go in that direction and completely lose personal rights; maybe skirt across the Gulf that way and find myself in an un-winnable war; or just go northeast and personally witness a growing revolution. Madness!"



Some days I just know I won't be running or going outside. Seth calls this "dusty."



Or a sandstorm blows in and if you happen to go outside sand will instantly coat your nostrils and mouth. They can last several days.



But rest assured that if your need for some new ink is insatiable, tattoo artists make housecalls.


When I buy my chickens I normally request that they be chopped into quarters or smaller, easy-to-eat sections so that I don't have to bother with it once I get home. A couple a days ago my guy also included the feet. I have seen Tony Bourdain eat chicken feet while visiting South Korea, but as Seth had no inclination to experiment I decided against the trouble of figuring out how to de-bone those suckers. On a different, yet similar, note: in that same episode I also saw Bourdain eat chicken anuses, but I think I would just feel inappropriate, like I owed the chicken dinner or something.