Christopher Street

Bad Weather

It has been 95 degrees in Washington for the last couple days. 95 degrees. It's the middle of April.

We aren't ready for this. We aren't. The dampers on the air conditioner are still set for winter. My closet is still set for winter. The only thing that seems ready for summer are my feet, clad as they usually are from April through October in one of the 5 pairs of Tevas that I own. Other than that, though, we are really not well prepared for this. Strangely, it's still relatively cool in the evenings, which means that if we leave the air conditioner on after we go to bed, it is downright cold at 7:00 am. If we turn it off, we can't sleep for drowning in our own sweat. It's a conundrum, that's for sure.

Making matters worse is the pollen count. From today's Washington Post:

"To fully convey the brazen ridiculousness of the number you're about to see, a brief preface is necessary: When talking about tree pollen counts -- the measure of grains present in a cubic meter of air -- allergists generally classify anything above 90 as 'high.'"

Okay, ready for the number? The number for yesterday was 2,587. Today's number was really a lot better at 2, 449. No wonder my contacts felt like...well, felt like felt yesterday. Did you know that Pollen magnified enough to have a discernable shape is shaped like a mace? Little spiky things protrude, better that it grasp things like trees and bees and cars, I guess. Not to mention eyes.

And now it looks like rain. On the surface, rain might seem like a very good thing. It will, after all, lower the pollen count and likely the temperature also. But, it will also screw up my commute home beyond reasonable expectations. My 20 minutes will turn into an hour and 20. And that's rarely a good thing.

Posted by Lori at April 18, 2002 4:44 PM