It's 87 degrees outside with 49% humidity. It feels hotter; it feels dreadful. I've lived through much, much worse days, but even the puppy doesn't want to play outside today. I throw his soft pink frisbie and after standing indecisively for a few moments he jogs half-heartedly over to it, collapses on the grass and gnaws on it.
Last time we went outside I tried bagging some pruned vines, but as soon as I felt myself began to perspire I was swarmed with mosquitoes, and puppy and I made a mad dash for the house. If I were God, drinking Jose Cuervo would add a natural insect repellant to one's sweat.
I've lived in Phoenix, well, Tempe actually, and this heat does feel different from the dry heat of the desert, but I hate hearing people say "It's not the heat, it's the humidity," because it suggests that if the humidity is low, the heat is tolerable, and it's just not true. As an undergraduate at Arizona State University I lived for a year in a dorm with huge swamp coolers at either end of the hall, and I remember returning to the dorm from the oven outside and standing, arms spread wide, head tilted back, in the damp cool breeze of the cooler. It brought relief only within a radius of about 10 feet. The heat was headache inducing, appetite killing, energy draining, intolerable. Much worse than anything I've experienced in the fifteen years I've lived in Virginia. It's not the humidity, it's the heat.
