Sweating

It's hot here. I'm not talking, "Oh, it's summer and it's a little toasty." I'm talking wet the minute you leave the house, sheets sticking to you like saran wrap, shorts stuck to thighs where they shant be, Africa hot. You don't believe me? Well here's the weather for this week in lovely Brownsburg, Indiana according to my good friends at Yahoo and the Weather Channel.


Now here's the weather for another part of the world.


Notice the location? Ndjamena, Chad, AFRICA. Now I have no freaking clue where Ndjamena is, but I do know one thing -- THE WEATHER IS JUST LIKE CENTRAL INDIANA. But more on the heat later.

This weekend we trekked down to Bedford to see the vast majority of my family. It was my grandfather's birthday and all my aunts, uncles, cousins, and kin had come in from exotic locales like Alabama. As always, it was great to see everyone. I marveled at how fast my cousin's son is growing and how good everyone looked, and in return, they marveled at the fact that I can write an entire blog about overeating and vommiting at various points in my life. I contend that these pages haven't merely covered those events, but upon inspection of the archives, it does appear that I've managed to cover what I eat and where I later deposit it pretty thouroughly here. I've scolded my content editor appropriately.

We enjoyed a quick hike through the village and Donaldson Cave in Spring Mill State Park with my family from Alabama. The pioneer village in Spring Mill is really fascinating. Apparently in the mid to late 1800's, old ladies with granny glasses sat in long dresses made of burlap making quilts -- even when it's 95 degrees out. Methinks the original settlers of that village might have found it amusing that their reenacting brethren don't have the good sense to not wear so much clothing when it gets hot out, but perhaps they did as well. Erin found it amusing that on the way into the village there are signs with friendly reminders like, "Absolutely no pets" and "No playing of games." (I'm not kidding. And they aren't there for historical import -- they've been placed there by the state. Somehow I'm thinking they must have placed that second one outside of Mackey Arena up in West Lafayette at some point in the past couple of years as well, based on the Boilers last few seasons of basketball.) The other curiousity was that despite all the seeming attention to historical detail, the first pioneer building you pass as you enter the village is a pioneer refreshment stand selling such 19th century staples as fried pork tenderloins, french fries, Klondike bars, and Pepsi. Those settlers sure did love their Pepsi.

Following our visit to Bedford, we returned home to Brownsburg on Saturday evening at midnight to a mild shock. As we entered our lovely Chateau de Vinyl Siding, we discovered that it was very hot. In fact, it was sort of like walking into a blast furnace. Erin quickly scolded me for turning off the air conditioning when we were just going to be gone for the day, but I quickly retorted that I had done no such thing. A quick check of the thermostat showed that it was 96 in our living room, and the air was blowing full tilt -- hot air. Upon resetting every switch and fuse I could find associated with our cooling system, I came to the conclusion that our air conditioning is officially out. We tried opening windows, but cooling a 96 degree house when it's still 85 degrees outside with no breeze doesn't work too well. Luckily Erin's parents live close by AND are on a cruise with my parents (I bet THEY didn't get to see a pioneer village Saturday) so we shuttered our house and headed for theirs. These past couple of days we've had a lovely time eating their food, sleeping in their bed, and fouling their toilets. Don't worry Deb, we'll leave the place looking like the cleanest truck stop in America before you return.

To escape the boredom of my inlaws empty house and the still sweltering heat of my own home Sunday, we decided to take a trip out to the eastern portion of the state to scout camping sites for a camping trip Erin is taking with some students in a couple of weeks. Here's the route of our journey.


It was a whole lot of driving to determine that there are no camping sites in the east-central part of the state which meet all the necessary criteria. And to make matters worse, Erin made me stop at Subway to eat lunch rather than finding a nice local establishment someplace that served dishes that were the results of "playin' with the frier." Damn that Jared for losing all that weight via Subway. If he hadn't, we'd all still be eating at McDonalds, wiping grease and "special sauce" off our chins, and forgetting about how many grams of fat we were ingesting. Oh well...