Maybe the hippies have the right idea with this whole global warming thing. All I know is that it’s 87 degrees in my room right now and I don’t have air conditioning. I have two fans blowing on me, and I still feel like roasted honky. I sincerely apologize for that visual.

Now that I live in San Elijo Hills, I’m reminded of just how much warmer it is the farther you move away from the coast. It’s been quite some time since I’ve lived this far east, and I’m starting to remember those blistering summers I survived growing up in El Cajon.

Speaking of El Cajon, my time there was spent running from house to house until we’d been run out of every neighborhood swimming hole and were forced to resort to using a public swimming pool. I must confess, public pools aren’t the most hygienic places to dunk your head. Then again, when it’s 105 degrees in the shade, even social cesspools of adolescent crud seem like a safe place to beat the heat.

Honestly, if one more person tells me the weather isn’t that bad because it’s only a dry heat, I’m going to drop kick them in the forehead. I don’t care if it’s dry or wet, it’s still miserable. I’d say a brush fire is fairly dry but I sure as hell wouldn’t want to hang out in the middle of one.

Then again, dealing with humidity isn’t much better. It’s a neat little trick that nature pulls on us. You’d think with more moisture in the air, it’d be cooler. And you’d most likely be very wrong.

True, I could always go to the pool and bathe in the cool, chlorinated waters that beckon daily as I drive by. Which sounds nice in theory, but having to deal with 24 overcaffeinated and undermedicated 7-year-olds screaming and running laps around my chair isn’t what I have in mind. I guess the parents just don’t find the humor in me coaxing their kids to practice diving in the shallow end. Or a triple lindy into the Jacuzzi.

And what’s with the almost daily news stories of people in Arizona who are dying from heat exhaustion? Well, yeah ... what are you expecting? You live in the friggin’ desert. If in your infinite wisdom you’ve decided to live in an area where the  local flora and fauna consist mainly of cacti and lizards, then I don’t have a whole lot of sympathy when you end up a piece of person jerky.

So I’m going to stop whining. All things considered, we have it pretty good. San Diegans bitch and moan about a few weeks of warm weather, and then turn around and do the same thing if we happen to have more than a few days of lazy rainfall. So, I guess I should just shut up and enjoy where I live. We don’t have hurricanes in August, and we don’t have to shovel snow in December. All in all, I think we’re still the lucky ones.

Now if you’ll excuse me, being naked in front of two oscillating fans can be a risky venture and I need to concentrate.