Emily is “slaving away” tonight  baking cookies to give to a few folks I will be seeing tomorrow.  We have been to the grocery store 4 times today (yeah, I know…not a word from you) getting this and that.  Anyhow, Emily asked me if I wanted to put the chocolate kisses on the warm peanut butter cookies.  I declined.  She fussed a little (only a little…she is well known for her restraint) and it was then that I decided I must be the Grinch.

You see friends, I am the Grinch because I do not really enjoy most of the Christmassy things that I am sure I am supposed to like.  I do not like setting up a tree.  I do not like decorating a tree.  I do not like caroling.  I do not like baking cookies.  I do not like wrapping Christmas presents.  I am ok with unwrapping them though.  Anyhow, I really do not enjoy a lot of the traditional things.  I am only one pathetic wiener-dog-dressed-up-like-a-reindeer short of being the full blown Grinch!

I always try my very hardest not to be grumpy around the kids but sometimes my Grinchness comes out.  But it was 60 degrees today for goodness sake!  How come we all aren’t Grinchy?  Perhaps some warm cookies and a glass of milk will cure my Grinchy self.  It may take as many as a dozen to cure me…

Our whole family loves to read.  We read all of the time and are pretty diverse in what we read.  Emily and the kids, in particular, like sci-fi and fantasy.  They all read the same books and truly love to get away into the lands and places their imaginations take them.  I like sci-fi and fantasy too, but my real love is reading about the end of the world.  Of course, there are all sorts of zombie shows on right now and with global tensions and economic craziness, I think many more people have a particular view of what that vision of the future might be, even without zombies.

The first book I read about a bleak future and the poop hitting the fan (SHTF), was the Grapes of Wrath.  If you search of apocalypse or dystopia on amazon, you will not see Grapes of Wrath, but life as depicted in that book was about as tough as it gets.  It has no discussions on zombies or mercenaries gone wild or killer plagues, but it demonstrates the strength of humanity and the willingness to endure and survive anything life can dish out. Lots of people also get their first exposure to the genre (sort of) in school.  Lord of the Flies introduces 8th graders all over the country to the end of the world (at least for the characters) and the struggle to survive each year.

After The Grapes of Wrath and Lord of the Flies, I was hooked.  I read 1984 and Animal Farm, Years of the City and Neuromancer, The Stand and Thomas More’s Utopia.  I read Walden and Walden II and Huxley’s Brave New World.  I love these books.  They are a few of the classic books about other futures, some good, most bad.  The Hunger Games series is, of course, an international dystopic hit that everyone knows.

I also like to read about more contemporary scenarios tied to specific modern subjects. One can ponder the future after global economic meltdown, killer asteroids, nuclear war,  pandemics and volcanic destruction by reading among Lucifer’s Hammer, Alas Babylon, The Postman,  Thomas Sherry’s Deep Winter series, One Second After, Rawles’ Patriot  and American Apocalypse.  I think the real possibility of most of the scenarios are slim, but I enjoy reading about the strength of human character and the will to fix what is broken and preserve what we hold dear.  I looked over my kindle and I have over 100 similar dystopian future books and that future looks bright!

Does anyone else share my love of books about the end of the world as we know it (EOTWAWKI)?  Do you know of any other books similar in subject?

So, last week (or was it two weeks ago?) we were without power for 6 days.  It was hot and without power, it got pretty uncomfortable. The fantastic effort by a bunch of linesmen from all over the country got everyone turned back on and life was once again electrifying.    I was all charged up to get back to a normal lifestyle and enjoy the rest of summer.  You see, I usually like heat quite a bit.  This Sunday, however, our air conditioner decided it had gone on long enough.  We kicked on the AC and the compressor outside sounded like it had a zucchini stuck inside.  It clanged and clattered and sputtered some.  It took me a few minutes of listening to the behavior but I finally ruled out the zucchini.  It didn’t seem worthwhile to try to investigate the possibility of other vegetables so we called a repair place.

As a side note, I think I am in the wrong business.  All of the hvac folks are days and days behind…every last one of them seems to be running from place to place removing zucchinis from AC units.

Anyhow, it is somewhere around 95-100 outside which leaves the house about 10 degrees warmer.  It’s very hot in here.  It brings to mind Nelly, the talented musician who recorded Hot in Herre (I’ll leave you to find the videos of the song…PG13) as well as other classics like Ride Wit Me and Grillz.  The gist is, he enters an establishment where folks do cardio-vascular strengthening exercises to the beat of music piped to all parts of the room.  In time, with such exercise, the patrons of the establishment find that their body temperatures begin to rise so Nelly suggests removing some of their extra layers of clothing (your mom told you to dress in layers didn’t she?) to expose more skin to the open air in order to allow perspiration to evaporate, thus cooling their bodies.

The repair folks came by and have scheduled the installation of a new AC unit on Thursday morning.  That leaves us several days where we find ourselves in a predicament similar to that in which Nelly found himself.  I’ll not describe the state of things around here in any more detail, but let me confirm for you that evaporation of perspiration is in fact enhanced with less clothing covering bare skin.

Well friends, as I said, you can find the original Nelly video but I hope you will be inspired by these folks who were overheated in their Sunday best: