Welcome Home!

I just paid a little more than $80 to have a nice air-conditioner technician tell me that the old A/C unit sitting outside my house is completely dead.

I’m sure he used much more technical terms than “dead” but he meant to say just that.

It was no surprise, as the A/C never worked the entire time I’ve lived in the big old scary house.

Essentially I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t getting rid of something that could be fixed for $20, but we all know that in the world of home improvement that’s never the way it goes.

It turns out my lack of A/C could be fixed for around, loosely, $4,000.

So it’s a good thing that I love the heat.

As far as I’m concerned the good old sun can just crank it up. Blow the gaskets. Let the mercury rise.

Even at night, when my upstairs bedrooms are sweltering for purely atmospheric and meteorological reasons, I try not to complain.

The cat complains, but hey, he’s wearing fur and he’s not into cool showers.

When I get hot, I just remind myself that only a few weeks ago it was raining so hard I was afraid I was going to turn into a duck and grow webbed feet.

For awhile there I checked between my toes every morning.

Given the choice I’d much rather be too hot than too cold, and yes I have lived in humid parts of this wonderful country. Most noticeably Maryland, where the humidity followed 10 points behind the temperature: 100 Fahrenheit and you could count on 90 percent humidity – at least that’s how it felt.

Still, even then, I much preferred the hot summers over the cold winters.

Now I’m not one of those sun-worship types. I’m Scandinavian and my natural skin color is bluish-white, you know, like skim milk.

I wear sunscreen with a factor level so high one friend says it could also be used to rust-protect the undercarriage of cars.

But the fact is that I get sunburned just by watching the weather forecast.

Anything above 75 and voila I’m lobster colored.

On this Fourth of July I’ll eat my hamburgers in the shade as I have no intentions of turning into the red in “red, white and blue.”

Happy Independence Day.