Sure, here in West Columbia, it’s only 93 degrees at the moment, according to my phone app, But my PC claims it’s 95.

In any case, hot enough, and in fact too hot. What, by the way, would I consider to be acceptable? A high of 80. I realized that on our recent trip to Dominica. It was pretty much that every day. Reminded me of Hawaii. I only every got hot once when I lived on Oahu, and that’s because I spent the day at a rock festival down in the Diamond Head crater — the walls of which blocked off the trade winds.

But I digress…

Of course, hot as it is — and it’s hot enough that I haven’t met my 10,000-step-a-day goal since Monday, July 10 (which is embarrassing) — it could be worse. Consider:

• A headline in The Washington Post announced that today, “The heat index reached 152 degrees in the Middle East — nearly at the limit for human survival.”
• Also today, China set a new all-time record — 126 degrees.
• A couple of days earlier, Death Valley hit 128. That’s just two degrees short of the world record measurable temperature ever, anywhere.
• Back to today — Phoenix, Ariz., scored a record of its own. It reached or exceeded 110 degrees for the 19th day in a row.
• This past week, in Athens, they had to close the Acropolis because of the weather. But you know how it is — it’s sometimes hard to get the AC to work perfectly in old buildings.
• Earlier in the month — the Fourth of July, in fact — the entire planet was hotter than it had been in the history of thermometers. And some said it was likely the hottest day in 125,000 years. This broke an “old” record that had been set… the previous day.

So yeah, it’s hot enough. I’m very thankful for air-conditioning, and I’m especially glad that there’s a vent right over my elliptical trainer here in my home office. Which will be handy if I get up off my butt and starting making up some of those steps. Which I might do in just a few minutes. Really.

Sure, the weather is not considered the most exciting of conversation topics, but this is special weather.

And I was wondering how the rest of you are handling it…

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