Heat Dome!

Living under the heat dome has not been particularly fun. I was steaming up yesterday, dripping, dripping like a leaking balloon from all over my pores, sticky salty drops of sweat triggered by unseasonably warm weather in the PNW that has broken all historical records. For reference, think Nepalganj weather -- late 30 Celsius to mid-fourties -- but in Pokhara. That's how life has been for us for the past several days, and tomorrow, Monday will be the worst.

I'll write in a different post about my small attempt at avoiding the most heated part of the dome, but here's the awful things that's happened because of this crap shit dirty gross weather.

First, I missed out on a nice hiking trip because it was so hot and crazy intolerably sweltering that I figured nobody would be sane enough to go hike. What I forgot was that they might be heading to cooler parts of the region, and dip into lakes for fun. So big booboo on my part there. Second, I've missed out on innumerable excursions to local parks, stores, restaurants and bars I might have made otherwise if the weather was more tolerable. Third, I've not written much, because it's so hot in here and I can't think straight. Nothing gets done in this weather because the body is in survival mode: help, help get me out of this burning oven, any place but here, etc. So multiple showers a day, closed blinds and hiding in the room away from company and life has been the norm.

It's not just that. Any decision-making has=s been kept on hold because I can't do any productive work in the apartment, the thick beads of sweat flowing down from my back or my forehead are a reminder that there's a more urgent issue I need to be taking care of. It's always a challenge to stay cool, and this has been the most challenging of challenging times.

The one good thing, I guess if anybody can even call it that is that people have been wanting to get together and do activities to escape the physical oppression through social connections. Which means going to parks late in the night, parties till wee hours of the morning, hikes to cooler places (yea I missed out on that one, happy others are at it), and jumping into cool lakes, something people rarely did otherwise. It's fun, but maybe the kind of fun that would rather be avoided if there were more tolerable things to be done in this weather. Getting out in the open before eight or nine in the evening is pretty tough.

It's going to last only two more days, and those will be the most oppressive two days, but when we make it through this, there will be much greater appreciation of what we have generally speaking, weather-wise, and how that's much more preferable to living in a hot humid armpit of the devil.