1. What's the high temperature today where you are?

Highs in the lower 90s, heat index approaching 100 as I type. It’s just plain awful and it’s getting worse over the next three days.

2. Favorite way(s) to beat the heat.

--Window shopping in rich people’s malls…they are always well air-conditioned.
--Movies—When we were kids growing up on the South side of Houston, on really hot summer weekdays, our mom would take us to the General Cinema Gulf Gate (the first Mall in Texas) for the summer movie festival, which would include 2 movies, a couple of cartoons, a hotdog lunch and 2 sodas. It rocked…
--Reading and/or watching cooking shows in the air conditioning.
--We lived across the street from the neighborhood pool when I was a kid, but I haven’t been much of a pool to cool person since then, because I burn something awful.

3. "It's not the heat, it's the humidity." Evaluate this statement.

See what RM wrote. This is the only time of year in Chicago I don’t itch…because it’s the only humid time of year. I will add that if you can find shade in low humidity places, it can actually be livable…not so in high humidity.

4. Discuss one or more of the following: sauna, hot tub, sweat lodge, warm-stone massage.

I’ve done them all…I love saunas but I tend to overstay and get a bit woozy. When I read that those feeling were basically from cooking the brain, I’ve become more careful. I love hot tubs…I mean really love them…but the last two times I was in one, I got a raging external ear infection. Clearly proper chlorination is essential. Sweat Lodge’s are just an effort to turn sauna’s into a spiritual experience—and given the previously mentioned woozy thing, perhaps a bit manipulative. Warm stone massage is a bit of hype in my opinion, but as a start to a good Swedish/esalen massage that does help loosen up muscles, I have no complaints.

5. Hottest you've ever been in your life

The hottest I’ve ever been…hmmm. There was a case I had once in Houston against a major grocery store chain. They were tooling us around in the discovery phase and at one point produced documents at a warehouse the week before the 4th of July. There were no fans, no A/C, and no circulation there. The external temp was close to 100 and that warehouse had to be 10 degrees hotter. (Our copy machine gave up the ghost very quickly.) I must have lost 5 pounds in two days…but we found documents that day that led to the case settling. That day competes with a day when I was the representative of Big Assed Republican Local Government Official (for whom I was a graduate intern) in the summer of 1988. I think I’ve mentioned that day before. We were marking trees to be preserved and Indian burial mounds to be protected. The heat index that day went over 100…way over.


Non-temperature related bonus: In your opinion... who's hot?

If we are just objectifying (straight men have been doing it for years to women, so it’s about time for women and gay men to return the favor.)

Raul Bova (the blue jeans guy falling into bed in those commercials…google him)

Becks (a bit too Metrosexual for my taste, but still a hottie)

Owen Wilson (why, oh why do I find him attractive? Heck if I know.)

Jon Stewart (brainy and funny is way hot)

Augusten Burroughs (writers can be very sexy)