A long time ago, which you will all agree 1984 literally qualifies for (if you weren’t born yet, just take a breath and remember the world has existed a lot longer than any of us have been around. Not the center of the universe, which is true, but not always fun to remember) George, Shana, and I moved back to the US from Germany. He was looking at being involved in a legal practice with a couple of school mates, I was headed to Johns Hopkins for graduate school. Shana? Well at age, she was pretty much along for the ride.
Now consider, Washington DC. It is June. Our house was just outside the beltway in Kensington. It was hot. It was humid. Houses came with air-conditioning. Cars did not, unless you paid extra. (you know where this is going, don’t you?) I wasn’t realistic, after all, air-conditioning was not exactly needed in Germany. Too hot? Open a window. And then there is the slight matter of being concerned about finances. Spending an additional $500 on A/C just didn’t make sense to me at the time.
So there I was, commuting 3-4 days a week to Baltimore over the summer in our small, red, reasonably warm car with the windows open on beltway and the Baltimore-Washington corridor. It was probably the least expenditure of calories to become heat acclimatized in my life. Now fast forward to the East Bay. It is mid-June. The temperature has been in the low 90s (think 32*C) in an area where windows open, fans aren’t standard household features, and few can even spell A/C. In fact, I was surprised at how few people were even wearing long sleeves.
The Eldest’s cats are sunning themselves, which seems totally and completely insane considering that Richmond is even hotter than Berkeley. OTOH – they do have jungle cat ancestry.
As it turns out, on this D+14 day, George’s ward is one of the few that actually has air-conditioning. Which, if you think about the fact that all the air going into the ward has to be filtered and scrubbed makes perfect sense. The windows don’t open, the double sets of doors not quite completely providing an air-lock, controlling the temperature of the inbound air is probably the easiest of what is essential for patient health. Of course, you can’t control the temp in each room, that requires a call to the maintenance people but that seems like a trivial thing to complain about.
I spent the morning and early afternoon running errands before heading back to SF. He now has clean laundry, I have a couple of projects that I can complete over the next several days. More than likely I will stay on this side of the bay till Sat night.
