Auto-Bathing Finally Underway and Goodbye to a Friend

It’s been very hot here this week, though I can’t give you exact figures, because on Friday, for instance, one website said it was 71, another said it was 80, and a third said it was a record-breaking 101 degrees. When I woke up this morning (not to mention when I went to sleep last night), it was very warm and I couldn’t think of anything I might enjoy doing other than walking two blocks to Vertical Clearance and having my head shaved down to the scalp, but staying in bed until it cools off didn’t seem feasible—it might be days—so I got up and called David and Lisa so David could say, “Neener neener,” or words to that effect, which seemed only fair. They’re enjoying a perfect 70-degree day in Seattle.

I went to Weather Underground and saw why the confusion may arise: They listed readings from 20 or so weather stations in San Francisco, and showed temperatures ranging from about 70 (at the beach) to 101 (in my neighborhood, always the warmest). That’s a 30-degree difference over seven miles!

The heat does start to feel a bit claustrophobic after a while (especially when you consider it’s probably going to get worse and worse until we all die of it, unless we die beforehand of thirst or starvation). I refuse to purchase an electric fan, but I’m making good use of some handheld ones.

Yesterday after work I joined some members of the Bike Coalition at the corner of 8th and Howard to offer free bells to passing cyclists; we did the installation right on the spot.

Hammett has finally, at the age of two, figured out that if he just has to lick a living creature, there is one always handy: himself. He used to smell a bit unshowered, and I had resigned myself to it, but now he’s springtime fresh. Because his fur is very short and not particularly abundant, he has yet to cough up a hairball, but I imagine he’ll start sooner or later.

The East Bay Municipal Utilities District is requiring its customers to reduce water usage by a certain percentage or face higher rates. This, as many have noted, is quite an unfair way of trying to reduce water use—if you’ve been wasting water like crazy all this time, you can easily meet the goal, while those who had already pared their water use down to the bone (so to speak) will have a much tougher time. They should just determine a number of gallons of water per person beyond which the rates will go up.

I myself have not particularly tried to conserve water because I figured the day would come when I would be forced to reduce my use by 15 or 25 percent, and I wanted to leave myself some swimming room. But I’ve decided to do better starting now, even if I suffer later, by taking a shower only every other day—I often do this, anyway, but now I can feel self-righteous about it—and by not flushing the toilet until necessary.

I have mentioned that I’ve been working on a proposal to install secure bike parking at my company’s locations, which are numerous and to be found in many states. I wrote this proposal a year ago and it has been more or less languishing since then, since we are following established procedures for getting things done in our large corporation. It has been frustrating at times, because installing bike racks seems like such a simple and obvious thing to do.

Fortunately, the proposal has made its way to various corners of the company, and we now have a proponent in the person of someone who works in communications. (She wrote in an email to several people this week that installing bike racks seems like a “no brainer,” bless her heart.) Meanwhile, individual locations are pushing for bike parking, and I found out this week that two buildings in San Francisco are adding ample bike parking soon, which was great news. At the rate we’re going, by the time the big boss says, “Yes, this proposal does appear to have all the t’s crossed and i’s dotted,” every last company location will already have bike parking, but that will be fine.

Recently I heard the Car Talk guys advise someone who called in with a car problem to ride his bicycle instead, and this morning they were discussing how it is now considered a “fashion faux pas” to drive a gas guzzler. Their hearts are in the right place.

I’m sorry to say that the friend I mentioned who left her house one day and ended up never returning to it, instead going to the hospital for a quintuple bypass, died this past Sunday. I extend my condolences to her children. Her daughter really, really didn’t want her mom to die and I really, really don’t want my mom (or dad) to die (ever), so I feel very bad for my friend’s daughter, who I think is younger than I am. I’m way too young to lose a parent, so my friend’s daughter is even more so.

Last and probably least, the news you’ve been waiting for, or, then again, not, of grilling. When I returned from Ann Arbor, Tom said there had not been any grilling while I was away, nor has there been any since. The last time the building manager grilled, on a very hot night, Tom and I had to leave the building entirely, and the whole place filled with smoke, even reaching the apartments in the front, one of which is occupied by the other griller and his kind wife.

Tom and I went down to ask the building manager to put the charcoal out and she and I ended up having an unpleasant interaction, but it can’t have escaped her notice that Tom was ready to say something about the grilling himself.

At that point, Tom was also ready to talk to the landlords about it, but then he decided to write the building manager directly and propose the use of a propane grill, and then he lost his enthusiasm for having this conversation, for which I can't really blame him.

Normally I would have pestered him until he did it, but he made a convincing case for a cooling-off period, and then I was away, and then there hadn’t been any grilling for a bit, and we decided to wait and see what happens.

And so far, nothing has happened. My theory is that the building manager talked to the other griller and his wife the next day and they gently said, “Yeah, our place did smell of smoke,” and that she finally figured out that if it’s bothering me plus Tom plus the other neighbors, maybe it’s not such a brilliant thing to do. (Though I’m sure she will never get to the point of thinking maybe she shouldn’t have sent a letter to everyone in the building saying I’m the only tenant who has this weird and unfathomable prejudice against smoke and fumes.)

Meanwhile, I also have the feeling that the nice wife said to her husband that she really didn’t feel comfortable grilling outside other people’s windows; she said to me once that she didn’t like to think they were bothering people. In any event, there has been no more grilling, and one day not long ago the neighbor went out and got his little grill and brought it back upstairs, and just a day or two ago, the building manager’s grill disappeared from the back yard.

It has been an interesting exercise for me in doing nothing, which is not what I normally do.