August 2, 2006
Beating the heat the expensive way
Reason I Love The Internet #2543: You can now purchase sheet music and print it out immediately; no waiting for shipment, just bam, it's there. Instant gratification has never been so instant.
I'm no great shakes at the piano. After a couple of years of lessons in high school and on-and-off noodling ever since, I can stumble my way through a few Chopin preludes, a Scott Joplin rag on a good day, and "Linus and Lucy", aka the Charlie Brown theme song. I'll never be a concert pianist, but I can play enough to entertain myself. Ever since we got the piano a few months ago -- did I mention that? -- I've been working through a bunch of the sheet music I had left over from when I studied in high school. I have Beethoven's complete works for piano, a book of classical melodies that my piano instructor gave me, some show tunes, and some pop music from the 70s that I think came from my grandma's house.
So yesterday, I decided to go hunt down some new stuff. I got some sheet music for a Bowling for Soup tune, and am pretty excited about it. Like I said, I'm no great shakes at the piano, but I can muddle my way through a pop tune, and let's all face it: Bowling for Soup's "1985" is a lot more fun to play than the Moonlight Sonata. (Although I am not dissing the Moonlight Sonata, and actually Beethoven's "Rage Over a Lost Penny" is kind of a hoot.)
In other news, it's really hot outside. You may be aware of this already. We have a heat advisory in effect for today; the Weather Service says that the actual temperature will go up to somewhere around 96, and the heat index will be about 106. Their advice is, stay indoors. Preferably with air conditioning on.
We have A/C this year, which is great, because I can sit here in relative comfort and look outside at the surface of the sun back yard and think, "Gee, that looks awfully hot" and not even break a sweat. It's the first time I've ever had air conditioning in a home or apartment. Previously we've made do with fans, and let me tell you from long-standing personal experience that when it is 96 degrees outside, all the fan does is blow hot air around. It's really not very refreshing.
I feel weirdly disconnected from the weather this year because of the air conditioning. Mind you, I am not complaining, not in the slightest, but it does remove me from the passage of seasons a little, to be inside a climate-controlled house. Usually by this point in summer, I'm sweating every time I even think about moving, and desperately wishing for the first frost to come, and batting away the hordes of insects that keep flying inside the house because we have to leave all the doors and windows open so we don't fry. I'd be taking the kids to anyplace that had air conditioning and obsessively checking the weather report to see if tomorrow was the day the heat would finally break.
This year it's all different. July ticked away and now August is here, and it's all the same to me. Obviously I'm paying attention; usually I let the kids play outside a lot, but today we're staying inside, because 106-degree heat isn't good for anybody. It just feels distant, and weird, not to have to worry about the heat.
Not, of course, that I am complaining.
Posted at August 2, 2006 9:52 AM