Day 75

It got hot in the Emergency Command and Control Vehicle today. I tried to keep it cool by closing the curtains closed and running a fan in one of the windows, but it still crept up above 90 degrees inside, and finally got to about 95.

I can function at 95 degrees, but that’s approaching my upper limit, and there’s a bell curve of boredom at that temperature. Starting at 85, the bounds on excitement start to creep in from the edges, 85 being too hot for extremely exciting things or extremely boring ones. By the mid nineties, the bounds have narrowed to exclude even “pretty exciting” and “pretty boring activities.” Writing software proved proved to be past the boundary in one direction, while test-flight rocket launching was out of bounds in the other. Thankfully the rocket launch was scrubbed due to lightning in Florida, and I was spared the discomfort of being anxious and lethargic at the same time. Lethargy ruled the day.

Now I have to give a nod to the workplace. My room there, even before we installed air conditioning, didn’t usually outpace the ambient temperature by fifteen degrees, as the ECCV can. Nonetheless, there are things I can do in isolation that I couldn’t do at work. Wearing a dripping wet kitchen towel on my head isn’t something I’ve ever done at the workplace. In isolation, that’s hardly any weirder than the other stuff I wear. If it’s hot like that again tomorrow, I might soak my whole self with the hose then go right back to work at my desk, because why not?

When we’re all back to the old grindstone again, let’s not give up the luxuries we’ve claimed in isolation. Forget Casual Friday. Our bosses can deal with our Star Wars pajamas. We don’t need anybody’s permission to wear long dress socks with cargo shorts. From now on, we wear whatever’s clean. And if we want to go to happy hour in a fuzzy bathrobe, we’ll do it, because that’s the freedom we’ve earned.