Gotta Have Those Bolts

Why would you want to grease lightning anyway? It's fast enough as it is i doubt grease would slick it any faster. And how would you apply grease to it in the first place? You'd probably...no, you would be electrocuted. 1.21 jigowatts. Not worth it.

Adam, it's just a phrase made famous by a popular "classic" 70's film. No one's actually going to grease a bolt of lightning. It's impossible.

Yeah. I know.

Anyway...

Last night was defined by a lightning storm, the likes of which i have never seen before. I don't think there was much rain because i couldn't hear any. Thunder, while it was certainly rumbling, wasn't as big of a presence as i would have expected it to be given the amount of lightning.

As i said to Alyssa during the storm (don't worry, kids, it was via AIM on my laptop, running on battery power to keep me disconnected from any electrical conductors), it's difficult for me to relate the visuals of the storm with words. This is how i tried:

It was like the paparazzi.
It was like a strobe light.
It was like D-Day.
It was like War of the Worlds.
There was a bowling party in Heaven and they were using all the lanes.

That's about the closest i can get with known references. there had to be, easily, 60 bolts of lightning per minute. That's 360 per hour. My windows were taking rolls and rolls of photographs of my room. There was constant static discharge between the sky and the ground.

It wasn't a concentrated storm either where all the lightning is over that way or out back. No. This lightning was all over; from every direction. Near, far, right here, way out there. Everywhere. Sometimes it woudl just be a flash and other times i could actually see the bolt. White, pink, orange.

FLASH...FLASH FLASH...FLASH.......FLASH FLASH FLASH....

Perhaps Zeus had a surplus of bolts and wanted to get rid of the excess. It's the end of the fiscal year on Mt. Olympus and in order to receive the same number of bolts in next year's budget, he must use all the previous year's up. I can't say as i blame him.

Gotta have those bolts.

Two Symptoms of Summer

1. LINE DRIED TOWELS

"Oh good," i thought when i got out of the shower and removed a clean towel from the cabinet. "Line dried towels."

I was being sarcastic.

Every summer, one of the most hated moments in my house (for me) is the rehanging of the clothes line. It stretches from a wooden post on our deck to a tree out in the back. My dad will hook up one side then the other. This, in and of itself, is not so bad. Clotheslines, as far as i know, do not have any ill intentions. They selflessly lend themselves to an energy saving cause. And who doesn't like saving energy?

So why the dread?

Winter leaves no possibility for air drying (outside) unless you enjoy wearing a sheet of ice. So the dryer becomes our medium for moisture removal. Clothes emerge warm, pleasantly scented and soft. A great feeling.

But in the summer they come off the line stiff, rough and uncomfortable. They still smell pretty good so that's not a problem. They smell like the fresh outdoors. But man...i could scratch my back with those towels. On a humid summer day that's really not something i look forward to wearing. Not that i wear towels. I mean the shirts that come off in the same condition.

So when i pulled out that towel i had to brace myself for a back-scratching good time. It's a party that lasts all summer.



2. FANS

Thursday.

Outside: Humid, showers likely, high of 83.
Inside: Humid, fluorescent skies, high of 85.

I get used to walking out the door into cooler temperatures than there are inside three seasons of the year. Even for part of the summer. But there comes that dreadful day when i walk out into heat. At 6:45 am. I don't want to think about where the temperatures are going from there. And even if outside is the same temperature as inside, the humidity overpowers it.

Hitting that sultry air unexpectedly is like walking into a giant cobweb. Like the ones on the Indiana Jones movies, especially The Last Crusade just before he clears the first booby trap. It covers, instantly adhering. It gets into your hair and clothes, onto your skin. Only this cobweb doesn't come off unless it's combatted with a few of its weaknesses. Water, wind, sleep and air conditioning. But only temporarily. As soon as you leave their sanctuary, it's back.

Such was the case this morning. I awoke in the cool, dry, air conditioned environment the inside had become during the night. Then i walked out the door, after getting dressed and brushing my teeth, of course. I wouldn't want to go to work in my pajamas and with bad breath. Not that the machines would care. Though i'm sure someone would frown at such an absent minded decision. Anyway...

The humidity, the warm wet towel that it is, fell over me. Breathing wasn't so easy and the weight of the towel slowed my movements.

Yuck.

What's worse is that the shop is not air conditioned, nor do we swim while we work. And forget sleeping. The only respite we have from the oppressive summer air is the motor-generated wind. Fans. Small ones, big ones, medium ones. Fast, slow, in between. Two speed, three speed.

Without that moving air we'd probably melt where we stand. Tim (the only survivor because he sits in the air conditioned office to do paperwork sometimes) would bring a new job for the saw over to me. But i wouldn't be there. Instead he would find a gooey, flesh-colored, blobby mess on the floor with a pair of safety glasses on top.

Of course then he would have to scoop as much of the goo as possible into the Adam mold. A shovel, some rubber gloves and a squeeegee (that's actually how it's spelled...) usually do the trick. And then i get placed in the freezer until i congeal into my normal self. The refrigerator works too but there's work to be done and the freezer is faster.

But despite the persistent heat and the infectious humidity, we persevere.

We have fans.