Extrapolations
Everyone knows that you can induce it to rain by washing your car (or in Magda’s case, our windows). It’s also well-known that this effect will not occur if for some reason you want it to rain. Other ways that we can affect the weather with our behavior include bringing an umbrella (to ensure that it will not rain) or forgetting to (which causes rain to fall and shops which might sell umbrellas to disappear). It seems that Magda and I have managed to extrapolate this corollary of Sod’s Law to the heat wave that was dessicating Primorska until shortly after we bought an air conditioner.
That was all it took, a modest outlay of cash. Okay, it was a hassle, and it was something that we’d been contemplating for a very long time, and in fact agonizing over a little bit. Not so much about the money (though the AC unit wasn’t exactly cheap), but about our ambivalence toward becoming consumers of conditioned air. And about bringing yet another massive item into our lives.
Okay, well worth it. If a problem as intractable as deeply oppressive heat can be fixed by throwing some money at it, why should we complain now that the weather’s turned cool? Because beginning about a week after we made the purchase, the heat broke and since then it’s been mostly overcast, rainy, and occasionally even chilly.
If this effect of the weather responding to human behavior can be extrapolated a bit further, I think great things are in store for the local climate. The building I work in, the one I spent all of July humidifying with my gallons of off-gassing sweat dripping onto my sizzling desk, is being fitted with central air conditioning. That’s right, the entire building will have AC installed by the end of August. Of course, by the end of August we won’t really need the AC, you may say. I would reply that such a view doesn’t go far enough. Once this building gets AC, my guess is that we will never need it again. I imagine that at this time next year I’ll be able to look out my office window and admire the majesty of passing herds of mastodons. Massive glaciers will once again fill the couloirs of the southern Alps, and we will be nice and cool, all thanks to our new air conditioning.
Naah, it`s always like that. A summer before I installed my AC, the birds were dropping dead from the heat, and then the summer AC finally was installed, they were chucking snowballs at each other.
Comment by cookie — Friday 11 August 06 @ 11.39 MDT+2.00
Finally I know who to blame!
So, what should we do know, do you think un-installing your AC would bring summer back?
Comment by Lilit — Friday 11 August 06 @ 16.35 MDT+2.00
I’m on the way to Jersey to get some ice. Can’t wait for the snow to fall!
Comment by DarkoV — Friday 11 August 06 @ 21.54 MDT+2.00
Gee, thanks a lot, guys. You had to buy your frikkin’ AC right before I took my long-anticipated summer vacation, huh?
Comment by Jean — Tuesday 15 August 06 @ 11.34 MDT+2.00