As Hell, continued

Some friends of mine went to see a play in the park yesterday. The heat index at go time was 103 degrees. One hundred and three degrees, ladies and gentlemen. Recreational outdoor activites should be cancelled when temperatures climb that high, but the show went on as scheduled.

Madness.

Went to a doc-in-the-box a few days ago to get a prescription for the ointment I’ve used since high school to treat the tiny patches of eczema that long stretches of extreme heat sometimes cause to appear on my fingers. I knew exactly what I needed – a 15 gram tube of fluocinonide cream .05% – enough to last me another several years – but I had to pay the clinic $100 to shuffle papers.

And they told me that I have high blood pressure, to boot. No doubt I did, after waiting for over an hour in a noisy room on a hot day while extremely hungry and pissed off after nearly two months of sitting motionless on my sofa because it’s been so goddam hot outside!

Nevertheless, the diagnosis did startle me. So I went out and bought a bunch of salt-free food and hunted down the exercise room we have here. I’m now walking two miles each morning on the treadmill, miles I used to walk outside back in the Before Time when the weather was sane.