relief from the heat

[kareina]

It has been hot in Milan lately, and, alas, I am one of those people who don't do well in the heat. My energy levels and motivation are the first causality. If I try to ignore it the next causality is my personality, as I become grumpy. Fortunately, I know about this tendency, so tend to treat the problem with frequent cold showers to lower my body temperature and thus keep myself from getting grumpy and unpleasant to be around. Therefore my life for the last week has been focused on coping mechanisms, and no where near as much work as I would have liked got accomplished. Because my house-guest, the delightful aelfgyfu was flying out on Friday morning, I took Thursday off of work to spend the day with her.

She chose shopping as the entertainment of the day. Those of you who know me well know that "shopping" doesn't make my list of top 100 things to do with my spare time. However, most of my friends live in other countries, and I don't get to see them in person very often, so who am I to pass up time with a friend? However, the day turned out even better than I'd feared. Yes it was way too hot outside, but once we reached the city center where the shopping district is we were able to duck from one air-conditioned store to the next, with outside time kept to a bare minimum, and always in the shade. First we walked down a street which holds expensive shops, so we'd duck in, she'd glance at a few things, I might glance at even fewer things, and then we'd move on. Eventually we looped around to the main tourist street, where the trendy yet sort of affordable stores are (right across the way from the Duomo), and there the process slowed down, as the clothing was finally in a price range that made it feasible to purchase, should one find something one actually likes. Accordingly, we started spending longer in each store, as she tried things on and I worked on my nålbinding. Once in a while she even found something I was willing to try on. Though, given that I like only dark colours and natural fibers and am fussy about the cut of clothing, that didn't happen nearly as often as finding things for her to try on. 7 hours later, we finally went home, and I was completely exhausted!

Her flight left from the Malpensa airport at 09:00 on Friday, which meant leaving the house at 05:00 to walk her to the station to catch the airport bus. I like walking at that hour--no traffic, no waiting to cross streets, no slow-moving, smoking, pedestrians to dodge, and it isn't too hot yet. However, soon there after the heat of the day settled in with a vengeance, and other than getting a nap, I didn't really accomplish much.

Saturday I moved my computer across the hallway into the library, which is air-conditioned. I can't really do this during the week, because the room is used by lots of people, but on the weekend there is pretty much no one in the building, and the few of us who do come in stick to our own offices. I wound up hiding in the library all day long. Every time I left the room to go to the loo it was like walking into a solid wall of humid heat, and I fled back to the comfort as soon as I possibly could. (note: when I say "air-conditioned" it means that it is cooled to just comfortable--it isn't cold or anything.) Late in the day I did head out to the local grocery store, which closes at 9pm, since I was out of fruit/veg and none of the stores are open on Sunday. Even though it was nearly 9pm, it was still hot enough out that I wasn't willing to take the extra time to climb the stairs to my apartment to bring my food home, but instead I hurried back to the library, and spent several more hours in a comfortable climate, until I was sleepy and needed to go home.

However, despite being comfortable without needing icy cold showers for the first time in days, I still didn't' accomplish as much work as I would have liked. I did write some letters of inquiry for information about jobs that were posted to the geology lists I'm on, but much of the time was spent chatting with friends and reading blamebrampton's fic. When I finally decided to head home after midnight I was delighted to discover that a wind had come up, and the evening had cooled off to not much warmer than the library. Since it was late enough that there was no one smoking in the hallway of my building, I opened my front door and turned the fan on to get a cross-breeze going from the balcony through the apartment. By the time I climbed up into my loft to sleep it was actually a comfortable temperature.

Much to my delight, when I woke up this morning the temperature was still comfortable! For the first time in weeks I wasn't driven out of bed needing an ice cold shower to cool off. Not only that, but the wind had cleared the haze out of the sky--for the first time in weeks the Alps were clearly visible! I celebrated by finally packing up clovis_t's books into boxes and re-decorating my sleeping loft. The loft is about as wide as a king-sized bed. The mattress that came with the house is a narrow single foam mattress which is only marginally better than sleeping on the bare wood of the loft. Fortunately, when my things arrived from Australia one of the egg-crate foam mattresses I used to use as layers in my tourney-bed was in the boxes (the other must still be at his parent's house). Therefore we folded that into thirds and set it next to the house-mattress, put his therma-rest on top of the house mattress, and then spread four doonas (feather comforters) over the top of them to make a double-wide bed. This left a narrow ledge at the side of the loft, so that the person sleeping on the edge needn't worry about rolling out of bed and all the way to the floor.

Now that clovis_t has moved to Scotland and there is only one of us who needs to sleep in the loft I've change the folding of the egg-crate foam into thirds and put it atop the single matress. That plus only two of the doonas atop it makes a much more comfortable bed, and leaves a huge expanse of loft available for other uses. Therefore I stacked up the four boxes of his books that I've packed thus far (that was all the more empty boxes I have at the moment--the rest of his books are in the cupboard awaiting boxes) on the end of the loft next to the bed, covered them with a cloth. This is now a nice stand for the stuffed animals and the small fan that keeps air moving up there. The morning's house-work took 2.5 hours, and there is still more to be done. But I decided that I should head in to uni and see if I can accomplish uni work, too. I've now caught up on reading LJ, facebook, etc. so now it is time to see if the cooler day (and the fact that my computer is still in the cool room) means that I will accomplish useful work tasks, too. I hope so--I've many missed hours this week to catch up on.