It’s Hot in Here (or Herre if you’re Nelly)
Whatever happened to “the coldest winter I ever spent was summer in San Francisco”? I’m not complaining, the weather is beautiful even though sweat-inducing I’m just a bit surprised. I’m hanging out at work late so I can suck up the last of the air-conditioning since there isn’t any in my apartment.
Right now there’s a bunch of tourists chewing out friends back home that told them to bring jackets to our part of the world because “it’s not So-Cal, it gets chilly there”. I’m glad we’re not So-Cal, it’s like 100+ degrees there! Of course that’s nothing to a Marine friend of mine who lives down in those parts. I was talking to him about the heat and he said it was cool compared to his hitch in Djubuti (hope I’m spelling that right) in Africa. He said it was 130 degrees when you woke up, of course that’s factoring in the humidity. That’s one thing I can say about the Bay Area, so far no matter how hot it’s been, it hasn’t been humid.
One great thing about this week’s heat wave has been watching adults eat ice cream cones. There’s a Baskin- Robbins near work so it’s been fun watching people walking by with those cool, sticky confections. They turn everybody into 8-year olds. You see grown men in business suits licking like their life depends on it so as not to get any on their tie or heaven forbid their suit. It makes me smile.
The other morning, Baltazar, Chunk and I were talking about ice cream with them professing their love for all kinds of ice cream, generally full of “stuff”: nuts, chocolate chips, marshmallows etc. and they laughed at me when I said my favorite flavor was vanilla. It’s true. I generally like my ice cream “stuff-free”, unless it’s a mix-in or sundae otherwise vanilla it is. Why? Because to me vanilla is the most versatile flavor. You can dress it up in a sundae or split, it’s the base for all types of shakes and floats and goes great on top of pie, between cookies or next to birthday cake. But even by it’s lonesome, for me nothing can beat a couple of scoops of vanilla on a day like today. Matter of fact I’m headed to Baskin-Robbins on my way home. Oh, don’t be too hard on the guy with the ice cream on his tie because somewhere there’s a woman with ice cream on her nose and I’d really appreciate it if you just smiled.