Friday, June 26, 2009

The little engine that couldn't

This is a picture of a window unit air conditioner at the Ringside Cafe in St. Petersburg, a place I've driven past hundreds of times but had never visited before Monday night. We went there specifically to watch local favorite Rebekah Pulley perform. She was great, as always, and so was the service and the food was much, much better than some of had been led to expect. Overall, it's definitely my kind of place and I really enjoyed it. But great googly moogly, it was some kind of hellacious hot up in there. Wooo!
To be fair, it's crazy hot all over the Tampa Bay area right now and people are struggling to stay cool everywhere. People who've lived here their whole lives have commented that this heat and humidity is more intense than anything they remember. I remarked to a friend that it's so prevalent and invasive that it's like living in a world depicted in movies like "To Kill a Mockingbird", where heat is a constant participant in everything that happens and all you can do is open the windows, hope for the best and take comfort in the knowledge that nobody is going to think less of you for having massive sweat stains under your armpits because everybody has them. So you simply can't pick on a place for failing to provide the icy, air conditioned comfort upon which so many of us have become reliant. It's simply too daunting a task. Take a closer look at the control panel of this particular air conditioner:


Yeah, that definitely says 60°. I'm sure it was doing its level best to get to 60°. It may have even believed deep down in it's freon-filled, energy-saving little heart that it was blowing at 60°. But I'm here to tell you...I know 60°. 60° is a friend of mine. It was not 60° in there.

2 comments:

  1. It looks like it says "88" to me.

    ReplyDelete
  2. And that's why Rupe lives in Califorania.

    That's what it's all about. << clap, clap >>

    ReplyDelete