Heat Wave

I took Thursday and Friday off after Independence Day to spend time with my nephew and get some things done "around the house" as they say. I had a great time with Kary and Luke at the Hilton Suites downtown and bopping around Michigan Avenue, and I had fun with Luke and my mom at the Lincoln Park Zoo. Also, before they got in, I actually took some time to go to the DMV. Usually a horrific experience, this visit went well. I now have a driver's license with my new address on it, and I don't have to get a new license until 2011. This is great news. Also, they made me take the written test even though I wasn't supposed to (they apologized profusely afterwards, what do I care?) and I got 100% correct. Yeah, baby. I rock. It was weird to have 5 whole days off of work without going somewhere. Weird as in boring, eventually. I found myself looking forward to work last night. Part of that has to do, naturally, with the fact that my work is air conditioned.

I learned a great deal about myself in the past two days. We have had horrendous weather here, 95 degrees and humid (which resulted in a heat index of 106 yesterday...ick). I have had central air ever since I moved back to Chicago, and so I have not had problems dealing with the heat in the past because of this. Now that I am in an apt. without central air, I am learning that I do not deal well with humid heat waves. And that would be an understatement. There are two words that should be said loudly here, with great sentiment: POOR SCOTT. I am a hideous, whiny, swear-word using person when it is hot in my apartment. Yesterday, I insisted that we go to the Chicago History Museum just for the air conditioning (it was a super cool museum with this great photo exhibit, but I digress). Then I wanted to see Ratatouille. So we booked it up to Evanston for the 4:30 show, where I swore like a sailor trying to get a parking space (Scott laughed at my "ridiculousness") and then when we entered the theater, we saw lines 25 people deep at each counter to get movie tickets. We were already late, so I knew that there was no way we'd make it in in time to see most of the movie. Obviously, I was not the only person who wanted to sit in a dark air-conditioned theater to escape the heat. I totally whined and pouted for like a half and hour. Scott handled me admirably, though even he was surprised by how unreasonable I had become. I had surpassed even his experience with me in the crankiness realm. Anyway, he pacified me by suggesting ice cream and a movie at home. So we got ice cream and rented "Breach" and turned the fan on us at my apartment. It was sweltering. You'd think a movie set in the wintertime would make me feel cooler. Nope. It was an excellent movie, though, so that distracted me for a few hours. Then I brought Scott home, and returned to my apartment and ran portions of my body under the cold water faucet to cool off (hands, face, feet). At least my apt. now has much colder water than my old apt. It works faster. I turned the fan directly on my face and fell asleep like that. Fortunately, I slept through the night, owed probably to the fact that it got down to 75 degrees and I had a fan directly facing my head. But overall, this heat is ridiculous. I can't wait until the thunderstorms come. They say that they're supposed to come today or tomorrow. They had better be right. Or Scott will beat them up.