When It Gets Hot, I Turn Lethargic

The massive heat wave that is the Summer of 2026 has made me extremely lazy. I still do a lot of reading, but I don’t travel much, even locally. If I head toward any of the valleys, I find nothing but hot sun and triple-digit temperatures.

Even my Thursday trips downtown are affected. For next Thursday, the predicted high downtown is 93° Fahrenheit (34° Celsius). In that case, I would be tempted to stay near the coast, where I live. Even that could be hot enough for me considering the constant humidity of 60% or more.

Climate change is turning me into a sort of homebody. I still do a lot of reading. (Current book: Paul Theroux’s The Mosquito Coast.) The temptation is to turn this blog site into an extension of my Goodreads site, except with pictures. That I don’t want to do: I like my posts to show more variety.

That high-pressure area that has encamped over the Arizona desert is bound to break up at some point. And there is a limit to how many Pacific storms could send constant humidity our way.

I live in an 80-year-old apartment building that was constructed without insulation. And we don’t have air conditioning. So it doesn’t take too intensive a heat wave to turn it into a sweat box. What with our recent meteorological history, I’m not a big fan of summer.