View from the Cheap Seats is kind of an extension of the newsroom. Whenever our three regular reporters, Calvin Daniels, Thom Barker and Randy Brenzen are in the building together, it is frequently a site of heated debate. This week: What is the best way to beat the summer heat?
Vegitate
If I had a dollar for every time someone said ‘it’s hot’ (usually with some colourful description of the heat included), in the last week I’d have enough for a rather major graphic novels purchase.
We all love summer because it’s warm, but when the temperature hits 30 Celsius we start to get irritable and start seeking out the shade, fan purchases jump, and we dream of air conditioning.
At 35C we get past irritable to something just short of nasty. Sweat stains are just common wardrobe accents. We no longer want to function above a lethargic lounge on the chesterfield, a fan or two, or three blasting directly at us.
If we hit 40C, rare on the thermometer here, but happens when you factor in some humidity equivalents, well we basically melt into an amoeba-like puddle, brain function a dull buzz like bacon in a frying pan.
So how best to beat the heat?
Well let’s be honest it’s a battle we can’t actually win, we must simply survive.
Drink tea. No, not the cold stuff. Hot tea helps, because it raises body temperature making the difference with the ambient temperature less. At least that is what my grandfather said, although he would not have used the word ambient.
I’ll admit I still like cold drinks though.
Finding an air conditioned bunker is the approach of many.
For me it just seems the inevitable return to the outdoor blast furnace is worse.
In the end I sort of surrender to the sweat. I try to summer hibernate, become as rock like as possible, usually with the aforementioned graphic novel, or a Blue Jays or CFL game on the television.
And when I have to crawl into the sun, well I do what we humans are supposed to do in the heat, I sweat, and verbally note the extreme heat at every opportunity to whoever happens by.
- Calvin Daniels
Jump in a lake
The absolute best way to beat a heat wave is, quite simply, to move to a cooler place.
If for some reason you can’t do that (you know, you don’t have one or two hundred grand lying around) then the second best way is to combine several smaller ways together to create a perfect ‘anti-heat’ environment.
First you turn on your central air conditioning to 17 or 18 degrees. If you don’t have that, then turn your window air conditioning unit on full blast.
Grab several of those ice packs for coolers, wrap them in towels and put them back in the freezer (we’ll need these later).
The next step is to find a winter sport either on television or via DVD for you to watch (I recommend anything Team Canada hockey wise).
Have all of that prepared at home, then go to 7/11 and buy yourself the biggest Slurpee you can, as well as an ice cream treat (my suggestion is a Klondike Bar).
Bring that stuff back home to your (by now) freezing cave, strip down to your underoos, go to the freezer and grab the ice packs in towels.
Return to your chosen sitting place (I’d say recliner in front of the television), place the ice packs in whatever area you so choose (for myself, under the arms, between the legs and behind the back of the neck) and enjoy beating the 35-plus heat.
Or go jump in a lake. Up to you.
- Randy Brenzen
