extreme weather

I am forever complaining about the ever-vigilant Portland weather media.
"OH MY GODDDDDDDDD! Its going to be above 70!!!!!!!!!" and
"OH MY GODDDDDDD! Its going to be below 70!!!!!!!!!!!!

Extreme heat warnings have consumed the newshours for over a week. Since moving to Portland, I HAVE, admittedly, missed my A/C, and HAVE begged that we get something to offset the 90 and above days. But Kurt wouldn't do it, until now. He had his reasons, mostly based in a little too much first hand information about how thieves view a window A/C unit... (give it a push and crawl on in...) but 105 for three days was enough of a threat I guess. As usual, of course, it didn't happen. It did get to 102, I think, on one day, and it was bizarrely muggy Friday night. The house never did cool off and I think I finally got a taste of what it must be like to live down south (way down south in the land of cotton.) and all that was missing was the big bugs you hear about. I hate bugs. Anyway, after a debate about the cost of three nights on the coast and the price of gas, and that would have been fine but the traffic to and from is absurd in the midst of a Portland weather exodus, we opted for an air conditioner. Then, it was about finding one. Not so easy. Home Despot laughed in our faces. Lowes wasn't much better. We finally found one at Sears. But then, the big one we wanted couldn't be supported by the 1910 wiring in our house, so we opted for a smaller one. And it WORKS!!! It is so nice in here. Electric consumption be damned.

So again, I live in the lap of luxury.

Haley just returned from an unauthorized hitchhiking trip to San Francisco. At 15, we were panicked, and intercepted her in Arcata, put her on a Greyhound bus and got her home. She is here now, and fine, in her beyond thunderdome attire. This just doesn't seem like a teenage phase. It seems like this is probably who Haley is. She prefers the company of vagabonds and dogs, and places like Takelma, with its burned out trailers and RVs and open air cooking, and I can't fault her for it. I love that she views the world so openly, and is so trusting. I hope nothing ever happens to dull her enthusiasm. I am a skeptic of the highest order. It is easy to say, about my significant history of hitchhiking, that it was a different world back then. But it wasn't. There were bad people then, as now, and good ones, and a vagabond culture of which I was family for a long long time. I didn't die from it, and I hope Haley survives her inquisitiveness and rejection of higher culture (if indeed we are higher....) If the oil runs out, as many say it will, we may all have to learn to live around a campfire. She may be the future.