It’s as easy as one, two, three! Well, maybe not so much this week, as I had to really dig deep to fill out my slate, but here’s three more random notes from The Nest’s week that was…
It’s not the heat, it’s the HUMIDITY! That’s long been the lament of those of us who live in the eastern two-thirds of the country who have to tolerate all of that evaporated water from the Gulf of Mexico making our summers days as miserable as possible.
Maybe we can just set the Gulf on fire like we did the Cuyahoga River…
I got a good reminder of this Thursday morning when I had to cut the grass. Despite five or six dry days in a row now, the grass was utterly soaked with condensation… and cutting wet grass is a huge chore. I took a few minutes before starting to prune some of those “tree weeds” that like to grow near houses and fences, and was already sweating just from that despite it still being only in the upper 70’s (about 25-26 C for my non-American audience) at 8 AM. By the time I got finished (and I ignored the part of the yard that’s mostly in the shade and doesn’t grow fast, which still took me half an hour), I was absolutely drenched.
Like my buddy Jermaine, here.
Those who have only lived in arid regions will never understand just how miserable the humidity can make even just warm temperatures… and that’s not even taking into account how hard it is to breathe soupy air. Sweating is your body’s main defense against overheating, and it works by evaporating, which cools your body. When the atmosphere is already pretty much saturated, sweat doesn’t evaporate, and thus does nothing but make you a hot, wet mess. Give me the days when it’s 100 in the shade, but your sweat actually had the opportunity to do what it’s supposed to do because the humidity is a nice small number…
Bonus… if it’s arid, you don’t have to cut the grass in the first place! YAY 2012!
Those of you who get the vapors (RIP Biz Markie!) when you walk into a store and see signs of holidays far into the future may want to skip over this segment… but I was quite surprised to notice at work that we’ve already gotten a display of candy in that is very clearly Halloween themed.
It’ll be here before you know it!
This is odd even for me, a veteran who knows you’ll find more bikinis on the clothes racks than coats in February. I’ve never seen Halloween merchandise infiltrate the store before the third week of August in what will be my 24th year in retail…. even with many places having gone back to school in mid-August for over a decade now, allowing an earlier entry point for the start of the retail Halloween season… it still doesn’t actually go out until after Labor Day.
And I’m pretty sure that display is new, and not just some stuff they found left over from the previous season, like that pallet full of expired candy still in Halloween display cases that was pulled down from the top steel one July after it had already expired…
I’ll bet this shit never expired… it’d survive a nuclear war.
After I had de-sweated myself from the lawn mowing adventure Thursday, I was going to give the DMV another shot… since, as you may recall from last week’s Threesome, my license expired on my birthday 12 days ago. Well, I got on their website to make sure I was going to have everything I needed, when lo and behold I saw this…
Fuck yeah! Now I can procrastinate some more wait until my mini vacay in September to try this gauntlet again…
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
Ugh, humidity kills me. I seriously melt into a puddle… and it’s not pretty. We’ve had 3 dry days and it’s been wonderful but the muggy is coming back this afternoon. Makes me long for fall. And yes, I saw Halloween candy on Thursday. In July. WTH? Chocolate and 90 degree temps do not compute.
🥴
All of our humidity finally mixed with the heat to pop up some big storms last night in what was supposed to be an extended rain-free period. Now it will make this coming week’s heat all the more miserable…
They did that license extension thing here too due to Covid but I went ahead and got it out of the way in my birthday month of September even though I had to have an appointment like going to the doctor’s. I totally agree about humidity – it absolutely sucks the life (and sweat) out of you and turns you into a limp *fill in the blank with a word of your choice*. Once in a very great while (like three days last week) we get a little break from sweat and are blessed with dry air. It’s a GIFT.
Pam
We haven’t had a dry air break in almost two weeks now, and this week will be the muggiest week of the summer so far. These are the weeks I want to bottle up and throw in the face of the people who complain about 30 degree days in winter…
I hate humidity—it just ruins the summer for me, and I feel so bad for all the critters in their fur coats. I also can’t stand that holiday consumer cycle. Bad enough that the Christmas displays go up on midnight of Hallowe’en but this is even worse!
LOL, is there some kind of law up there about when Christmas can go out? Phase TWO Xmas goes out on November 1st here…. which is gift sets, most wrapping paper, novelties and of course candy…. all the stuff people will buy right up until we close on December 24th. Phase ONE Xmas, which is decorations, trees, ornaments, and other things people generally have already bought before December 15th, always goes out in mid September! And then there are the toys, which is already converting over to the BIG MUST HAVE HOLIDAY TOYS as I speak. Though at least we won’t decorate that up in holiday signage until November! 🙂
We have Remembrance Day on November 11, so it’s kind of an unwritten rule that Christmas stuff isn’t put out until after that, but not everyone abides by it:-)
Interesting. That’s observed as Veterans Day here, but it has zilch to do with retail holiday seasons. And unless you have a government or banking job, it isn’t even a day off work…
High humidity is dreadful. Here it is extremely dry, but now we have huge forest fires. Halloween in July? Yikes. Absolutely takes all the fun and anticipation away. As mydangblog says, the unwritten rule here is no Christmas stuff until after November 11, and most people abide by the that. Those who don’t are kind of looked down on. It’s kind of hilarious though watching the merchants scrambling like mad fools to get their stuff up as soon as Nov 11 is over. Yikes.
That is definitely odd. People here will complain about early holiday displays, then will sneak stuff in their carts in October so they can decorate their yards the first weekend of November before it gets cold. I’ve always told everyone who ask “why?” that if people didn’t buy the stuff when it was first put out, you wouldn’t see Christmas before Halloween…
Good news on the DMV thing, though I can’t help thinking that a whole year’s worth of renewal customers will be queueing up come the end of the year…
Other than the exorbitant fees the state charges to purchase your vehicle registration online with a credit card, there’s not much other reason for people to visit the DMV other than to renew licenses, so I’d imagine many people are anyway (as I hopefully will long before January 1 as well). And depending on how much longer people want to live under siege, that may very well get extended into 2022 as well, so maybe I’ll never need to renew my license ever again!
I thoroughly enjoyed this yesterday (on Sunday) but was unable to comment properly until today. We had 47% humidity here last week and Utah is theoretically the arid capitol of the world (aside from Phoenix, Arizona or Gallup, New Mexico) and I thought I’d DIE. I hate humidity with a vengeance that is mighty. The downside to arid though is that after a certain age (and regardless of gender) one’s skin starts to look like a dried out piece of leather. So uncomfortable, sticky and hot OR uncomfortable, dried out and aged looking with the strong possibility of melanoma? It’s a tough choice. I’ll take the melanoma over that damned humidity.
We’d take 47% here any time of the year. Other than the one drought year, I’m not even sure it ever gets that low in the summer. Usually you can wring water out of the air with a dry rag…
Yay on the extension!! Posts like this remind me how fortunate I am that those upper 90’s in the Mile High in a dry heat are not so bad (nonsense-it still feels like hell but at least we don’t have the humidity growing mold in our sweaty armpits). Happy Monday. Remember only 58 days to the official arrival of autumn.
Official Schmofficial. Just five weeks until the start of Meteorological Autumn!
Yeah, humidity sucks… Glad you didn’t completely melt/dissolve into a puddle of your own sweat, though!
We’re used to it here, but that doesn’t make it any less pleasant…