When I was a kid growing up in Oregon there was one rule you could almost always set your watch by. When it was hot in the valley the heat would rise and draw in the cool air off of the Pacific, but not before dark. A lot of afternoons we'd get a hot dry wind down the valley. It was like volcano breath sucking the moisture out of everything and making even laying on the grass in the shade tiring. I remember a good number of summer days, and even a few summer evenings after my folks closed the shop for the day, when it was unbearably hot in Eugene so we jumped in the car and ran over to Florence. On the coast it would be cool.  Maybe even foggy if it was a real scorcher inland. This was in the days before most houses had air conditioning so it was a wonderful respite from the stifling heat of the valley. My folks would stay by the ocean until nightfall and the follow the cool damp breeze back home. I remember several times falling asleep in the dark back of the car on the way home with the cool wind coming in the window, and then waking up in my bed the next morning.

I've been thinking of this because it's been hot here. We were over 25c (80F) several days and once bested 30C (90F). Now if you remember, where I work didn't have air conditioning in my part of the building. This was the genesis of the "liberating the AC for the proletariat" story from a couple of weeks ago. Luckily they got it fixed just in time. We've been reasonably comfortable at work, which is nice. I did make a couple of discoveries though. First the AC in my car doesn't work nearly as well as the AC in Marsha's car. This isn't really a surprise as my car, (now known as Ragnar Slaughterbot Wolfram-Knurling), is after all ten years old. The second discovery is that it makes no difference as we don't have AC at home so any "freshness" salvaged after a day at work is gone immediately after I arrive home. Lastly for some reason the rules that applied in Eugene don't seem to apply here in BC. As hot as it's been here, it's been significantly hotter on the mainland. In the Cariboo and the Okanagan Valley they've seen temperatures over 35C (100F) for much of the week. It's been insanely hot with the added heat of all the forest fires. Yet despite this, we haven't had any onshore flow of cool air. Often there's been almost no wind at all.

The heat made us drag out the fans. Now it normally only gets hot for a week or so, so there's no reason to buy an air conditioner. Fans will do for the short time we need something. We drug out our fans and discovered that they were shot. Unfortunately dispite all the roaring and spinning they seemed to not be able to move much air. After a few nights we went in search of a fan. First was a sale fan at Superstore which was OK but not really what we wanted. Then we checked Canadian Tire and Target and they didn't have much of anything, which was a bit of a surprise. Lastly we stopped by London Drugs. Remember London Drugs? Computers, pizza ovens, furniture, TVs, cosmetics, cameras, and oh yes a pharmacy in the back as well? Well we found a perfect Honeywell tower fan on sale. It was normally $59.99 discounted to $49.99 and then this week only all fans were on for 20% off so we got it for a little over $40 after tax. It makes a fraction of the noise the other fans made and moves many times the air volume. There's a reason London Drugs is one of my favourite stores.

In other news, a couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I had gone to an audition for a role in the play Ethan Claymore. Well, on Saturday I got a call from the director who told me I got the part. Not just any part either. I got Ethan Claymore, the title character. Rehearsals start in ernest in September and the play runs through most of December. I'm psyched. We'll send pictures as soon as we move to the stage. If anyone is going to be in this area in December it runs from the 11th to the 28th with a matinee on Boxing Day.

PIX: Sunday we beat the heat on a friend’s boat. We cruised around the islands. We parked in a lea, there was a lot of wind out on the water, and had lunch. Some went swimming, and we all discussed the problems of the world, philosophical questions, sports and other irrelevancies. It was a very pleasant day. (Thanks Jeff!)