Too Hot to Handle

[Note:  This was from last week and didn't post, I guess.  My IT guy says he's talked with our provider and hopes that we won't have burps any more.]

This past weekend, I got to go to a couple of very nice receptions with a quick stop in Las Vegas for my mother's birthday and I learned a few interesting things.

The first thing I learned is that if your flights are more than four hours apart, Southwest will not let you check your bag through to your final destination.  Apparently, because I checked my bag in San Jose for my flight to Las Vegas that landed around noontime and my flight out was not until 7:00 pm or so, the San Jose person would not check it through to Burbank, my final destination and, because it was more than four hours before my next flight left, I could not just take the bag up to the ticket counter and check it back in.  Instead, I had to lug it to my sister's car and then check it in when we got back to the airport.  Luckily, I had plenty of time each way, but what a bother.

Then I learned that Las Vegas has gotten hotter than it used to be and I mean really quite hotter than it used to be.  I used to go to Las Vegas every year to see my sister at different times of the year.  Then, after her son was born, I would go every year timed to be there for my nephew's birthday party.  Unfortunately my sister, whom I love dearly, had the bad taste to have her son in August, so from 1996 until his Bar Mitzvah in 2008, I went to Las Vegas every single year in August.  After that, I did go once in September and found out that September is a lot cooler, but I have data for all those years in August and in all those years, while we did hit three digits every now and then, usually the high was no more than 105 degrees - plenty nasty, but bearable for the short time needed to go from the car to the air-conditioned whatever (mall, restaurant, house, supermarket, etc.).

But not this year!  This year it was 119 degrees!  And these people build outdoor shopping malls - what are they thinking!?!?  And they walk around in them too - without hats or water bottles!  It was 116 degrees on the second floor of the parking garage - 116 in the shade!  When we got in the car, I was afraid I was going to burn myself on the seat belt tongue.  And people live here - voluntarily and all year long!

Apparently, my sister likes the heat because she suggested we walk around the outdoor mall and to be a good sport I went for it.  I didn't have the heart to tell her that the last time I felt dry heat like this, it was in a day spa sauna, prepping me for my body scrub, and they measure how long you are in there and give you bottles of water to drink while you sit there.  We had to walk around and without supplies either!  Finally, she wanted to go in a store and I sent a silent prayer upward for air conditioning.  I could feel the heat oozing out of every pore and my core temperature getting back to almost bearable while my sister complained that she was cold.  I offered to buy her a jacket. :-)

So I get back to the airport and fly back to Southern California for my weekend of receptions.  But the hard part was that the heat, or at least most of it, seems to have followed me because for a second weekend in a row, Southern California was three digit hot.  Now I do not do heat well at all.  Anyone who knows me knows that I am totally sun and heat soluble and should not be out in either for any length of time.  But here I was, day after day of baking beyond my ability to cope.  I suppose that at the receptions these past two weeks, I probably wasn't the best of company because I had the worst heat and dehydration headaches.  The Chapter rooms were too warm and while other facilities had better air conditioning, you still had to get in and out of the car and walk some distance in the sun and the heat.  And doing it in a formal with a full petticoat was pretty unbearable.  The two receptions in lighter clothes were certainly easier to do, but the heat was just nasty.

The problem is that there is really no good escape.  Whether you are in Southern California or in the Central Valley, from Bakersfield all the way up past Sacramento, if it's August, it seems to be HOT.  Sigh!

Next weekend, I am in Burlingame and Union City.  I will not make it to Golden Gate Fields because of work.