the best invention

Climate control, hands down, is the best invention. Okay okay sure certain medical procedures and stuff actually take the cake but climate control (as in air conditioning and heating) does not get much limelight and it should.

We just "survived" a heat wave. Here I go sounding like, wah, my first-world problems, but air conditioning rocks my socks. It was 95 here a few days ago. Sure it wasn't very humid but 95?!?! Where I live, very few homes or businesses have a/c so 95 is hot. I went to my grandma's 94th birthday party (awesome huh, 94!) And OMG. It was 95 indoors and out with no breeze. Add in that I am 9 months pregnant and it is beyond unbearable.

The best part of my day was getting home and basking in the glory that was our "splurge" purchase, central air. Oh how I love thee. I then got to thinking how did people survive without a/c? I mean, places like Phoenix, Palm Springs, Las Vegas had inhabitants before air conditioning. Places like Riyadh, New Delhi, Cairo still exist, with millions of inhabitsnts, without much a/c. How do they do it? Sure, you "adjust". You build buildings that shield the heat. You take naps in the heat of the day. But maybe it is my first eorld snobbery but "adjust"? Umm, no.

Maybe I am justifying my snobbery. Maybe I really did serve my penance but know what? I am grateful for a/c and consider it a necessity for my well being. See, I grew up without it. Sure, where I lived never got above 85 but my room....it broiled. It was an attic without insulation so it would broil and be 95-100 degrees by late afternoon and stay that way until about 3am all summer. I could barely move, think, or sleep. I just...sweltered. Then, my parents refused to use the a/c in their cars no matter what car it was ,and they loved road trips. In August. In the daytime. Through the Mojave Desert. Then, yep there is a then, in college my dorm was not air conditioned. In the desert Southwest.

I feel like I served my sentence and can bask in the glory of a/c, fully justifiably. I still do wonder how people do it...live where it is so hot. Maybe I am just a heat wimp. But again, I praise the a/c. Which got me to thinking about cold. People lived in Chicago, Calgary, Moscow before real heating.... huddled around a fireplace, stoking a fire all night, barely keeping it above freezing. That sounds like misery. While I prefer a little cold to heat (you can always put on another layer, you can only remove so many), imagine living where it is -40c or f. Imagine that with just a little fireplace. Having to worry about firewood for your actual survival. How miserable.

So thus ends my pointless ramble of praising climate control. I'm going to go be shameless and put my a/c down to 64 for bedtime because aaaah I like it that