High temperature alert

It’s pretty hot in Seattle.

First, advice from someone who grew up in the desert:

  • Drink lots of liquids, but don’t drink just plain water because sweat loses electrolytes
  • A good way to cool down reasonably quickly is to hold ice against a major artery or vein, such as your wrist or armpit, or against your sternum (but be careful about overdoing it in that case)
  • A breeze can help but at a certain point you’re only blowing hot air around and heating it up even more
  • Avoid caffeinated or alcoholic beverages

Anyway here’s today’s mood board:

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My refrigerator was dying, so I ordered a new one a week ago.

This is relevant because it was going to arrive on Thursday, which would have been in time to make plenty of ice for this ridiculous weekend heat wave, except the delivery people couldn’t figure out how to get it through my door because it was too deep.

So I enlisted Spud’s help to get him to take my sliding door off before the delivery folks arrived on the redelivery attempt, and they ended up arriving at the same time as him… but fortunately these delivery people actually understood how to get fridges through doors. So Spud and I just hung out for a bit instead, and appreciated how relatively-cool my basement is.

Anyway, I have a new fridge now, but having a new fridge on the same day as a gigantic heat wave hitting a city that isn’t prepared for it doesn’t lend itself to having ice available.1

So I drove around to all of the nearby grocery stores, and was unsurprised to find that the outdoor temperature gauge on my car actually does have three digits.

The convenience store near me was all out. QFC had some but they’d had a power outage so they weren’t letting people take things from the freezer. Safeway didn’t have ice at all. So I went to Saar’s, and they were out… but I decided to buy some popsicles and a few other things. And lucky for me, between the time I entered the store and the time I was ready to check out, they’d just gotten a new delivery of ice.

So I bought five bags (which I took straight off the palette that was still being unloaded), which was enough to fill up my large cooler (along with drinks left over from my birthday party), and set up my box fan to blow across it to give me a little cooler spot.

And then the box fan decided today, of all days, to burn out.

Fortunately I have some smaller fans which I have blowing across my cooler full of ice… which is very rapidly melting, and I hope that Saar’s will have more ice later this evening. In the meantime I’m filling up as many containers that I can with water so that I can keep a pipeline of large-ish ice bricks going from my new freezer.

Around a month ago I started the process of getting an air conditioner installed in my home because I figured the summers would be getting worse. Unfortunately I didn’t get things going quite in time, and I’m still waiting for one of the bids, so it’ll probably be a month or two before I can get an AC. Hopefully the fact I already got my installation consultations scheduled means that I’ll be at the front of the queue for installation, though — it’d suck to get preempted by people who had even less planning than me.

Anyway. My cats are sleepy puddles right now and an hour ago I measured 110°F (43°C) outside my home. And the asphalt is 145°F (63°C). I’m sure I’ll be fine but oh god this isn’t gonna be fun, and I feel really worried for many people near me, especially the homeless population. Seattle is running a few public cooling centers and on Monday I could probably just go into the office to cool off.

Currently it’s 89°F indoors and 99°F outdoors. I’ve closed my windows and have had my blackout shades shut all day too. It’s gonna get worse before it gets better, but hopefully Tuesday things go back to relatively normal, as predicted.

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