Joomla Login LightBox powered by WowJoomla.com

After a few weeks of in your face, surface of a neutron star, apocalyptic hot weather, there’s just no ignoring it.

It’s summer in Missouri. An experience some have compared to being trapped inside a wet towel in a dryer in the backroom of a coal-powered submarine deep beneath the surface of the ocean.

So, join me for a moment while I let out a heartfelt, ugh, wipe the sweat from my conveniently bald head and flip on my trusty desk fan. It looks like we won’t be seeing 70-degree days again for a few months. That’s something we all have to live with regardless of our biological predilections to temperature.

Personally, I’m not built for anything above 80 degrees F. I come from a long line of hardy, stocky, cold weather people, and we don’t do summer. When it came time to pick from the gene pool, we chose body hair, pale skin and an affinity for overcast skies and chilly temperatures. Nine months out of the year, it works out pretty well for us; the other three? Not so much.

But hey, summer’s not all bad and despite my numerous qualms with the season, it has it’s highlights as well.

In addition to the aforementioned often unbearable meteorological conditions it brings, summer is also the catalyst for some of our finer outdoor activities from barbecuing to lying poolside with an ice cold beer or taking in an outdoor concert while barbecuing and drinking an ice cold beer.

Really, as long as barbecue and ice cold beer can be worked into the mix, just about any outdoor activity can be made entertaining and slightly more bearable, even if it’s a simmering wok pan kind of day.

That’s really my only tip for summer relaxation: stock up on beer and meat and you should be just fine (assuming you also have air conditioning and a number of fans accessible at all times).

Some people may want to waste your time with statistics and health claims and various defensive practices to use to guard yourself against sunburn or heat exhaustion this summer, but I won’t. I’m no doctor and to be honest with you, I got a C in Biology, so when it comes to health advice, I’ll direct you to the series of tubes that is the Internet. I hear you can find credible advice there from time to time.

Listen to what they have to say, write some of it down, then go to the store, buy some Boulevard and some pork shoulder, pull out the lawn chairs and the smoker, maybe an umbrella and hunker down in your backyard for a few hours.

After a few hours, you can retreat to the cold embrace of your air conditioned home for the rest of the day.

Just remember, summer is a thing that should be experienced in short bursts, followed by prolonged series of air conditioned goodness. Just like hot sauce, a dab will do.

If that doesn’t help, you might want to look into acquiring citizenship in a place like Iceland. I hear the fjords are lovely this time of year.

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed