Body Temp

I went through a good chunk of my adult life being ill aware that the direction in which a ceiling fan turns makes a difference whether it sucks hot air up and out or if it pushes hot air upon you. A friend was over for dinner the other night and as we don't have air conditioning at the moment, my girlfriend and I were most likely naturally bemoaning our ceaselessly sweaty brows. He posited a simple, observational question on which direction our fans spun. We kind of disregarded it at first, like, what difference does it make, it's blowing! But he persisted and said let's try it. So we did. And we stood beneath its blow and felt the difference and he was a correct gentleman. So the day before the hottest two days of the summer (so far) we got it straightened out. Strangely I feel a touch of de ja vu on this fan directional knowledge, that it felt familiar somehow, that I actually did know of this fact and yet somehow over the course of my 27 years of brain collected information about the world, this bit had been squeezed to the far back of my awareness of simple, everyday inefficiencies. I can't help but feel embarrassed, as the next day at work I mentioned to my colleagues my new found nugget, as though I had discovered something radical about home economics. And they all nonchalantly proclaimed their previous knowledge of the fact. Everyone in the world knew of this trick except me and my girlfriend. And my girlfriend is a smart cookie. Although even more embarrassing is that subconsciously I knew of this fan directional shit and did not make any steps to ensure our fan correctness beforehand, two years in this apartment and these were not the first hot days we've suffered here. But a problem solved is a problem solved.

Something else we've been trying is filling a bucket of ice and setting it in front of a box fan and works a little like a makeshift AC unit. Certainly not as intense, but helpful.

I spend most of the day under the blast of AC at work, which makes the heat even more overwhelming at the end of the day. I'm wondering if air conditioning is making us wimpier as a species. Sure there's global warming, but mankind has survived through heat waves for hundreds of thousands of years, and a now a high day in the 90s shuts us down and in. Productivity slips....slips...slips, like the sweat of our pits. Going from extremely cool conditions certainly cannot be the best thing for the human body. A bit shock going on to the internal temperature regulation organs. I really think it fucks with our body's ability to regulate body temperature. Yet I won't complain about the high AC at work. In fact I highly look forward to go back to it tomorrow. Even if it puts recycled dust into my throat. My pits will be comfortably regulated by electricity.

Fat Fever

I'm probably one of the only people I know without the Air Conditioning. Maybe it's because I'm rugged and tough. Or fairly poor. Last night the humidity in Chicago got vicious, a little build up of moisture of the approaching storm we had this morning. I could hardly sleep last night, I even turned a faced the other edge of the bed as to get some more of the box fan in my face to dry the gushing sweat. I sweat like a fat sliver of bacon pan frying and sloshing up skin oil. I don't think I really slept, but I did have some half dreams where I was cognizant of lying in my bed, sweating, but hallucinated people coming in and out of my apartment. They were un-phased by the humidity, and they chalked it up to the fact that they were of a higher class and could afford not to sweat. Maybe there is a spiritual hierarchy, like the Hindu castes, and the energy centers affect DNA's ability to withstand temperatures. But these fancy people did flaunt their dry pits and didn't want to get too close to me as they believed the fat that was oozing out of my pores would stain their dresses and slacks. I must have some humiliation hovering in my subconscious that I can't quite put my finger on. But I did shed many toxins through the exit of my skin pores last night and need to do laundry to get that fresh sheet smell.

From my office window this morning, within seconds of arriving at my desk, I saw the dark clouds roll in, intense winds lash down the trees, funneled down the train tracks. Looked like a hurricane. That is probably how my sweating looked in the judgment of my dream figments who watched me try to sleep.