Molendinar Monday

molendinar ~ of, like or pertaining to a mill or miller

So…hot enough for you? Have you ever noticed that even when the temperature is sort of reasonable outside the house still manages to heat up like a furnace?

Of course you people blessed with central air conditioning have no idea what I’m talking about, do you? While the rest of us struggle to find ways to stay cool, you’re going about your daily business, safe in the knowledge that the temperature in your house will remain constant no matter what it’s doing outside.

But heat is one thing, humidity is something else altogether, something else you people with central air don’t have to worry about. You can look at the temperature and think “Oh, this isn’t so bad” but you’d be wrong. You've forgotten about the humidex.

This is what happens when you live right on a large body of water, like Lake Ontario. Just like the wind chill in the winter makes it colder than it’s supposed to be, the humidex makes it hotter. So on a day that the temperature is only 24 Celsius, which is a reasonable 75 Fahrenheit, the humidity makes it feel like 36 C, which is an unholy 97 F.

And let’s not forget the creeping dampness, caused by the humidity. This is where everything around you feels damp – you, your clothes, your furniture, your pets – there’s no escaping it. Bread goes mouldy in the blink of an eye.

We do not have central air. We have two window air conditioners – one in the dining room and one in the upstairs hallway. There’s an oscillating fan on the dining room table that blows the cold air into both the kitchen and living room, and we have a couple of fans upstairs – but we only use those if it’s really bad.

For a fan to work well enough to cool you down for sleeping, it pretty much has to be blowing directly on you. Even in high humidity this tends to dry you out a little too much and you wake up with a sore throat. And let’s not forget the noise. Fans tend to be just a tad on the noisy side. Not as loud as an air conditioner (which is why it’s not in the bedroom), but enough to bother your ears if you have to listen to it all night.

Last night the air conditioner in the upstairs window died. The hubby managed to resuscitate it for a short time, but around 1:30 a.m. it began making a grinding, clanking noise, which even if it had still been blowing cold air (which it wasn’t) we wouldn’t have been able to sleep through. It was just fortunate that it had cooled down enough outside that what little cold air came out of the unit’s last gasp was enough to keep us going through the night.

I really have to wonder though, how did we ever survive the heat before air conditioners?

Meedless Monday

Oops! My bad. Apparently in my rush to get this posted last night so that it was still Monday, I somehow managed to forget to save the actual post. One of those technical glitches that I usually catch but....Sorry about that!


meedless ~ undeserving; unrewarded

Yowsa! I almost forgot about this post. But I have, what I think, is an excellent excuse. The heat has turned my brain to mush.

You know all you people who were whining about how cold it was in the winter, and how you wished it was summer? Well I hope you’re happy. We’ve got summer all right – in spades. The heat is bad enough, but the humidity is killer!

What’s the point of summer if it’s too hot and sticky to enjoy yourself outside? The weekend we spent in Toronto was insanely hot, but being outside was tolerable because it wasn’t particularly humid. Plus there was a decent wind most of the time.

But the last few days here have been hot, hazy, and humid. How’s that for alliteration? And what little breeze we’ve had has been hot, hot, hot.

I don’t handle heat particularly well, humidity even less so. Sunday night after dinner I went outside to the front garden (which was in full shade by the way) to dead head my petunias and within minutes I was dripping in sweat.

Have I mentioned we don’t have a central air conditioning system? What we have is an a/c unit in the dining room window and one in the upstairs window. There’s a fan on the dining room table to help distribute the cold air into the living room, and there’s a fan in the bedroom upstairs that I try not to use because it gives me a stuffed nose and a dry throat.

There have been threats of thunderstorms, but no rain. The hubby has had to water the plants just about every day. He was a little concerned about his tomato plants because they’re starting to look a little rough, but I reminded him that last year his single tomato plant looked the same way before starting to bear fruit. And sure enough, the plants are covered in little tomatoes. He’s even got one fully ripe one and three that are almost there.

But the lawns, however, have gone from lush and green to dry and crispy. And summer’s really just getting started.

Global warming indeed.

Mandarism Monday

mandarism ~ government with a large bureaucracy

If last week was rather dull, cold and damp, hot and damp, and depressing and damp, the weekend more than made up for it.

First of all ... remember all that flooding we had? Well in an effort to save the beach and/or the tourist season which traditionally kicks off on the Canada Day weekend, the Town of Cobourg had truck loads of sand brought in and dumped on what was left of our beach. After the heavy equipment finished spreading all that sand, we had a partial beach, at least down to the life guard towers.

Then it rained again

This is what the “beach” looked like on June 30 (Friday):

Well, that was certainly worth it, wasn’t it?

Despite the lack of beach, the weather was actually better than predicted. Friday was wet and miserable, but Saturday, which was supposed to be filled with thunderstorms and rain, was pretty hot and humid. Frankly I’d rather have a good honest rain than high humidity, but the sky was clear enough for the fireworks to celebrate Canada Day, and the water had actually receded enough that we could sit on the beach to watch them.

But even better than the fireworks was something we stumbled across on the way home. We passed a small group of people carrying large paper lanterns and torches, headed to a more secluded area of the beach. Once on the shore they fired up the flame sources inside the lanterns and once they were buoyant set them free to drift away.

That’s not an actual picture of what we saw, that’s just to give you an idea. But as awesome as it was to watch, I have to admit we had to wonder about the wisdom of letting the lanterns loose from this narrow stretch of beach. Between the tall trees and the houses so close to the shore, I think it was just dumb luck that nothing else caught fire.

I don’t usually check out the Waterfront Festival that’s held over the holiday weekend, but I did this year. The dampness didn’t seem to discourage attendance, it was pretty crowded when we were down there. And I don’t think the vendors had too much to complain about, business must have been good - even I bought something.

It’s my new writing bag. Big enough to hold note books, pens, and even my Alphasmart Neo. It’s from Guatemala and I was told it was made from material repurposed from native dresses. The embroidery is from the top part of the dress, the rest from the skirt. I’m not sure how much of the sales pitch I believe, but I’m going to enjoy using it.

Belated Happy Canada Day to my fellow Canadians, and an early Happy Fourth of July to my American friends. I’ll have to remember to dig out my Independence Day movies to watch on Tuesday in your honour. :-D