Above Normal...

 

"Is that like Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average"?  If you said, "Garrison Keillor, from A Prairie Home Companion," you are close and get 5 bonus points as a "participation award."

I'm talking about our local weather weasels... "This will be hottest week of the year.  So far."  No shit, Shakespeare - every week will be "the hottest week of the year - so far" for the next couple months.  Average temperature here for this time of year is 107º.  For a newbie desert dweller, there is nothing normal about living just outside The Gates of Hell. 

To quote the late Sam Kinison and his rant on world hunger: "You live in the f****** desert!  Go where the food is!  We have deserts in America - we just don't live in them!"  Screaming Sammy was funny... not accurate, since about 4 million of us live in this desert in Phoenix... but funny.

 

That's not normal.  Why do people live in the desert?  To get away from "winter"?  People don't live at the North Pole.  'Cause they aren't stupid.  Apparently, living in the desert makes you stupid.  The weather weasels tell us: "You won't want to be outside after noon because there's an Extreme Heat Warning.  It will still be in the 90s through the overnight hours..."  Do we need to be told this?  Are there people here that are so stupid that they don't know you will spontaneously combust if you go outside after noon?

Normal.  At what point does all this "above normal" become normal?

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This is serious.  I like my hot tub.  As in: I use it almost every night.  I like to sit out there after dark and watch planes go by and enjoy the jets (the water kind, not the flying kind) on my my joints.  We are kinda on the flight path for Sky Harbor Airport for traffic coming in from the west.

The serious part: the temperature of the water.  I turn the temp down when its hot like this... 100º feels kinda cool (I keep it at 103º during the winter).  It's an EcoSpa and seems to be well-insulated.  It hold the temperature very steady when it is cool out.  In the heat, the tub is more affected by the sun pounding down on it.  With the temperature of the tub set at 100º, the water temp will climb to 104º or so in this heat... too hot to comfortably soak when the outside air temp is still in the upper 90s.

So, I adjust the temperature on it, as necessary - trying to determine how the heat and pounding sun will affect the water temperature.  I've been doing pretty good... until these over 110º temperatures.  Time to set up the pop-up kiosk over the tub...

It makes a difference.  Last night, the water temperature was 101º when I got in for a soak, around 9:30pm.

"So, why don't you just build a gazebo over the tub, Jim?"  I like the open air feel of where we have this - I can look straight up at the stars, look to the west to see air traffic, or watch the moon come up over South Mountain.  Even this pop-up kiosk cuts down a lot of that visibility, but at least I can take it down for the months it isn't needed.

Yeah, a "first world problem."  Last year at this time, we were gone: spending time in North Carolina, then Arkansas, then New Mexico.  We will be here in the desert for most of the summer this year, so I do what I gotta do.  And, I miss the hot tub when we aren't here.  Such a dilemma, huh?