#heat wave

I am so ready to murder the weather.

Hotland is not as fun as I expected

The good part about a heat wave is when it breaks and you get thunder, lightning and heavy rain

We now turn our attention to Flash #193: “Captain Cold Blows His Cool”. The issue was published in December 1969. It was written by John Broome, drawn by Ross Andru, and inked by Mike Esposito. It also has what is quite possibly the best Pre-Crisis Captain Cold cover. 

• Apparently this issue was the first Captain Cold issue comic book writer Geoff Johns ever read, and the cover in particular helped make him the Captain Cold fanboy we all know today. 
  
• The story itself begins with five elderly crooks escaping from prison. The guards go out to search for them, and ask a group of young surveyors if they’ve seen anything. They young men respond in the negative, and the guards drive off. 
• As soon as they’re gone, the “surveyors” reveal that they are the old crooks who escaped, having been de-aged by a mysterious sixth man. Said sixth man also gives them a mirror so that they can fully see the results of their transformation. 
• Old Criminal #2: “Looka me! I’m “Pretty Boy” Lloyd again!” Nice. 
  
• The old criminals ask their mysterious benefactor who he is, how he de-aged them, and why he helped them escape. He responds by ducking behind a tree, taking off his surveyor clothing, and very dramatically popping out as Captain Cold. 
• Captain Cold: “Get set for a big surprise–as I doff my surveyor-garb–and make a spectacular appearance as–CAPTAIN COLD! Fellow criminals, I’ve made you young again! I’ve given you back your youth–but you still retain your old skills–a fact that will be of supreme benefit to us all!” 
• Yes, Captain Cold has created a way to DE-AGE people! And no, he will never use it again after this issue. Nor will it ever be mentioned again, even though it seems like it could be really useful. 
• Old Criminal #3: “Captain Cold! Now things are clearin’ up—he can do anythin’ with that Cold-Gun of his!” Even things that have nothing to do with temperature or motion, apparently. 
• Pretty Boy Lloyd: “Yeah–he’s a real razzle-dazzler, Pop–uh–I mean Harry!” It is interesting that these old criminals seem as impressed as they are by the Captain. I almost would’ve expected them to disapprove him him needing “new-fangled gadgets” to commit crimes or something. 
• Captain Cold takes the old criminals to his hideout, which he has decked out with lots and lots of pictures of Laura Lamont, an old-time movie glamour queen in her seventies. She’s is Len’s newest stalkee-girlfriend, and, in addition to her age, she hasn’t been seen in years. 
• However, Len’s not concerned. He has the power to make his new bride-to-be young again, after all, so all he has to do is find her. And while he’s doing that, he’s going to send the old-time criminals to steal her wedding presents. 
• Because of a newspaper article she recently wrote, Len knows that Iris Allen knows where Laura Lamont lives. As a result, he disguises himself as a lawyer in the hopes of being able to convince Iris to help him find her. 
• Len on Iris: “A week ago an article appeared in Picture News written by Iris Allen–whom I used to be in love with before she went haywire and married that no-account police scientist Barry Allen! With me should could’ve lived like royalty-bah! Who can figure women out?” And this, Len, is why you still don’t have a girlfriend. 
• Also, Len’s disguise consists of a wig, some glasses, and a very fake-looking beard and mustache. 
• Captain Cold drives to the Allens’ house (which he knows the location of for…some reason) in a pink car that I’m pretty sure he stole, and introduces himself as Mr. Pendergast. He tells Iris that his client died and left a fortune to Miss Lamont…if she can be found, then asks Iris to tell him where Laura lives. 
• Iris refuses, but she does promise to contact Miss Lamont and tell her about the inheritance. Len gives her his card and walks away. 
• Iris tells Barry that she’s heading out to see Miss Lamont and tell her the good news. Barry, for his part, thinks that the lawyer looks familiar. His suspicions are raised further when he notices that the lawyer waited in his car for Iris to leave and then followed her to her destination. 
• He changes into the Flash and tries to follow them both, but since he doesn’t know where Miss Lamont lives, he loses them. 
• Then he gets knocked off his feet by a super-sonic blast emanating from a nearby building. He runs inside to see what’s going on and finds two of Cold’s crooks stealing an incredibly valuable painting. 
• “Young crooks? But they blew that safe like seasoned professionals!” 
• In addition to being unusually experienced, the crooks are also armed with high-tech weaponry. Since it’s apparently a sonic weapon, maybe Len got it from Piper? 
• However, well-armed or not, Flash manages to defeat and capture both crooks and take them to the police station. 
• The next day, at the police station, however, he finds that their fingerprints match those of Pop Handley and Fargo Jones, both of whom are pushing sixty. This confuses everyone, as nobody knows about Captain Cold and his magic inexplicable de-aging powers. 
• The police also tell Barry that there were a rash of other robberies that night, with a gold ring, a tiara, and a fur coat all being stolen. 
• Barry goes out to investigate as the Flash and heads to the site where the old crooks escaped. Once there, he finds a frozen stump and leaf and naturally comes to the conclusion that Captain Cold is involved. 
• Barry attempts to follow the residual radiation from Cold’s gun, but it’s been too long since he was there. “Captain Cold’s trail is too cold!”
• Barry proceeds to run around the city in hopes of picking up a new trail. He eventually finds it at the store the mink coat was stolen from. 
• Barry uses the trail to follo Cold to his hideout. Upon his arrival, Cold somehow manages to use his suit to project a proto-cold field to slow the Flash down long enough for him to “reach my absolute weapon!” 
• Said absolute weapon is “this special attachment to my Cold-Gun!….It lowers the blast-temperature of my gun to below absolute zero!” SCIENCE! 
• Amusingly, Len even seems aware of how much science is breaking in this issue. “I know that sounds impossible-but then, everything I do is impossible! I don’t know what will happen when I hit you with this–but it’s bound to be absolutely horrible-oh, absolutely!” Was this a pun on “absolute zero”? 
• As it turns out, the below absolute zero weapon “not only knocked Flash to pieces like a jigsaw puzzle–it embedded the pieces right into the wall!” Um…uh…SCIENCE! 
• Len puts a picture frame around the Flash’s pieces, checks himself out in the mirror (”I must look my best tonight–my very best!”) and then goes out to propose to the woman he’s never met. 
• “I’m as nervous a a cat! I’ve waited so many years for this moment! Sometimes it seems to me that I’ve been in love with lovely Laura Lamont all my life!…But what if she turns me down?—-Bah! She can’t turn me down-not with what I have to offer her!” Oh, Len….Interestingly, this is the first time that Len has considered the possibility that his stalkee-girlfriend might reject him. 
  
• Thus assured, he dramatically breaks into her cottage.
• Captain Cold: “Please be calm, my dear! You have nothing to fear! I am Captain Cold! Perhaps you’ve heard of me!” Len, if you didn’t want her to be freaking out, maybe you shouldn’t have broken into her house and dramatically proclaimed yourself as a well-known criminal. 
• Laura: “Oh, yes–I’ve heard of you! You’re an evildoer–a ruthless criminal!” 
• Captain Cold: “Nothing of the sort–I’ve gotten a bad press, that’s all! Deep down, my heart is filled with love-especially for you, darling! I want you to be my wife! But before you reply, listen! To begin with, as one of your wedding presents, I’m prepared to give you back your youth–your beauty of years ago!” Question: What would Len have done if she was okay with marrying him, but asked him not to make her young again? Would he have been on board with marrying a woman who’s probably at least forty years his senior? That might’ve made for a more interesting story than what we got, actually. 
• Back to the actual story, Laura thinks that he’s making fun of her. In response, he pulls out his cold gun, points it directly at her face, and shoots her with it! Way to calm her down, Len. 
• He tells her to go look in a mirror, and when she does, she sees that she’s young again. She asks him how he did this, and he replies that he’ll tell her after they’re married. Then he takes her back to his hideout. 
• Once they arrive (and she changes or he makes her change into a red dress for some reason), he presents her with the crown, the mink coat, and a bunch of other treasures and jewelry. He leaves her alone with all of the stuff while he goes to phone the justice of the peace, because this marriage is going forward even if they’ve known each other for less than two hours! This is why no one will date you, Len. 
• Instead of calling the Justice of the Peace, Len accidentally calls Mick instead. “By the Aurora Borealis–I know that voice! I absent-mindedly dialed Heat Wave’s number–instead of the Justice of the Peace!” 
• Cold invites Heat Wave over to his hideout so he can show him the defeated Flash (and also have him be the best man at his wedding to a woman who’s forty years older than him who he’s known for two hours).
• However, when Mick arrives and Cold shows him the defeated Flash, Mick totally freaks out for some reason (I guess because he won’t get to have his last fight with the Flash) and blasts the frozen Flash pieces with his heat gun. Somehow, this undoes whatever Cold’s below absolute zero gun did to the Flash, and Flash goes back to normal. 
• Captain Cold and Heat Wave get into a brief scuffle over who’ll get to kill the Flash the second time, and then Barry knocks them both out and takes them to the police. 
• The issue ends with Barry and Iris discussing the case. Iris says that Laura told her that she hadn’t wanted Cold to make her young again; aging had been too painful for her the first time. Therefore, she’s just going to put on a wig and makeup and pretend to be old until she actually is old again. This seems like a potentially interesting bit of characterization; it’s too bad Laura didn’t get very much focus in the rest of the issue.
•  After Iris tells Barry about what happened to Laura, Barry tells Iris that the reason Captain Cold called Heat Wave instead of the Justice of the Peace was because he managed to use telepathy to make sure that it would happen. So yeah, apparently Barry has telepathic powers that he never uses again. 
• In speaking of things that never appear again, what happened to the Cold Gun’s ability to make people young? Why did Cold never use that again, especially once he himself started getting older? 
• And what happened to the de-aged criminals? Did they stay young, or do the effects eventually fade off? 

I have so many questions about this issue. It’s an entertaining story overall, but there are just so many questions that never get answered and so many powers that never get brought up again. 

It’s also a pity Laura Lamont never appeared again. She and Ayesha, the Maharanee of Joadpur (from Flash #150) are easily the most interesting of Len’s non-Iris stalkee-girlfriends.

After a long hiatus, I have decided to return to my summary of Len Snart/Captain Cold’s tumultuous Silver Age love life. Today, we will be looking at the second story in Flash #166: “Tempting Target for the Temperature Twins”. As the title suggests, this story will also feature Captain Cold’s frenemy, Mick Rory/Heat Wave. The issue was published in December 1966, and the story we’re looking at was written by Gardner Fox, drawn by the inimitable Carmine Infantino, and inked by Joe Giella. 

• Although we won’t be looking at it in detail, the first story in issue #166 is called “The Last Stand of the Three-Time Losers” and features the Flash fighting some random crooks, all of whom have already been arrested, convicted, and sent to prison three times and will go to prison for life if they’re arrested again. It was drawn and inked by the same men who drew and inked the Captain Cold story, but it was written by John Broome.
• This story also raises a very pertinent question: if Central City follows a “three-strikes” crime policy as this story implies, how are the Rogues always managing to get out of prison on parole with no apparent difficulties? All of them have presumably been arrested and convicted way more than three times each. Does the law just not apply in the same way to people who take up costumed aliases for some bizarre reason? Do they just assume there’s no point since they always break out anyway? Or are the Rogues secretly a big enough tourist draw/advertising point that the city doesn’t want them to be put away permanently? This story’s premise raises way more questions than I think it intended to. 
• But enough about the legal system of Central City…it’s time for ten pages of never-ending temperature puns! 
• The story begins as it means to go on: “Once more those desperadoes of degrees come into Central City with a hot idea for chilling cold tricks! Yes, Captain Cold and Heat Wave are back at the old stand, dealing out frostbite and heat-prostration at one and the same time! But now they find their nemesis the Flash in cold storage–because of a red-hot injury–making him a tempting target for the temperature twins!” 
  
• Captain Cold: “Cool it, Heat Wave! You don’t have a chance of overcoming the Flash before I do!” 
• Heat Wave: “That’s a lot of hot air, Captain Cold! I’m putting a heat-hex on your cold calculations!” 
• Yes, the whole story is going to be like this. Brace yourself. 
• The story proper opens on Barry Allen, who STILL hasn’t decided to tell his wife (of almost one month) that he is the Flash. Before we can spend much time on his stupidity, however, he notices a factory that’s on fire and rushes to the rescue as the Flash. 
• However, in the process of saving the people trapped inside, he sprains his ankle (as a result of landing hard after the floor collapses under him). A doctor on the scene confirms the injury and tells the Flash that he’ll need to stay off his leg for a few days. 
• The Flash is given some crutches and heads for home, thinking about how this is going to be the end of his secret identity. (Seriously, this is what he’s worried about. He’s got an injury that is supposed to put him out of commission for a couple of days and might make him a target, and his biggest concern is his wife finding out his secret identity.)
  Also, it must be a slow news day, because a reporter on the scene thinks that a picture of the Flash on crutches is going to make for a great story.  (Okay, it’s probably really the whole story about him saving people from the fire, but still!) 
• Meanwhile, Captain Cold and Heat Wave are standing outside the “ultra-fashionable house of gems”.
• Heat Wave: “Fire away, Captain Cold! My blood’s burning for a little action!” 
• Captain Cold: “Cool it, Heat Wave! Ever since we first teamed up as the Temperature Twins, we’ve just about had it made!” 
• The two successively fire their “tricky temperature-triggers” at the wall, making it contract and expand repeatedly until it crumbles. 
• Heat Wave: “We make a terrific team of Thermologic Twins, CC!” 
• Captain Cold: “I hope that’s a compliment, HW!” 
• The “Frosty Felon” and the “Caloric Crook” step through the debris and make some truly menacing threats. 
• Heat Wave: “Don’t move, folks! There’s going to be a hot time in the old town tonight, so stay loose!” 
• Captain Cold: “I’ll keep you as cool as cucumbers!’ 
• Cold freezes most of the people in the store in place, leaving only the models who are wearing the jewels free. They’ve stolen most of the jewels when “their fingers freeze while their hearts catch fire.” The last of the jewelry models is, evidently, attractive to them both. 
• Cold: Heat Wave, did you just cause a mirage with that hot-rod of yours? Ooooh!” 
• Heat Wave: “She’s for real, Captain Cold! Miss Fashion Gem of Central City! Oooh! I want a date with her!” 
• Cold: “ Cool off, Heat Wave! If that choice morsel of frozen dessert goes out on a date with anyone–it’ll be me!” Smooth, Len. Smooth. 
• Heat Wave: “That’s a lot of hot air! She’s for me-” 
• Cold; “Why, you hothead! I’ll freeze you so cold you’ll think an iceberg is a bonfire!” 
• Heat Wave: “I’ll put you in cold storage!” Mick, honey…you’re getting yourself confused. Len makes the cold-based threats, not you.
  
• At this point, Heat Wave realizes that they shouldn’t be fighting, and they propose a friendly competition. Whichever man wins gets to date Miss Fashion Gem (no, she does not get an actual name in this issue). What does Miss Fashion Gem think about all this? Who cares! Not Captain Cold and Heat Wave! 
• “And so these partners in plundering pyrotechnics–those deadly desperadoes who deal in degrees of heat and cold (but are pushovers for a pretty face) stalk out into the street.” This may be the greatest bit of narration in any comic book ever. 
  
• Random Male Citizen: “It’s Captain Cold–and Heat Wave!” 
• Random Lady Citizen: “What gall–robbing in broad daylight! Somebody call the police!” 
• Heat Wave: “Nobody interferes with our game of hearts and flowers!” 
• Random Expository Citizen: “Encircled by tongues of heat–keeping us rooted to the spot!” 
• After preventing the bystanders from calling the police, Captain Cold and Heat Wave move on, looking for an appropriate challenge. Luckily for them, the Flash (still on the crutches) shows up at exactly this moment. Both Rogues are delighted. 
• Captain Cold: “Shivering spines! Here comes the answer to our problem—the Flash!” 
• Heat Wave: “Oh, torrid degree days! Whichever one of us puts our arch-nemesis out of action wins the prize!” 
• I’m not sure why an injured Flash is a more worthy challenge than those random people from before, but whatever. 
• Both of them promptly attack the injured Flash, but, after a few seconds of peril, Flash notices that the “alternate doses of heat and cold–are having shock-effect on my sprained ankle! Easing the pain–a little more of this and my ankle will be back in shape!” 
• Yes. Captain Cold and Heat Wave’s blasts are healing Flash’s sprained ankle. SCIENCE! 
• Flash: “Got to make them keep hitting me with these medicinal temperature treatments–so I’ll pretend to still be injured and run on my hands!” 
  
• Cold: “Ha! Ha! What a sight!” 
• Heat Wave: “Flash–just before you pass out–tell us whether it’s due to my heat or his cold!” I love that Heat Wave apparently thinks that Flash would be totally on board with doing that. 
• Flash: “This breeze I’m causing while rotating on my hands is forming a buffer between me and that heat-and-cold—except for my ankle which needs it most!” Flash comics, everyone: where science goes to die! 
• Once his ankle is fully healed, Flash manages to get Captain Cold and Heat Wave to shoot each other, and both are knocked out. 
• Flash: “In a way, I’m grateful for this double-barreled attack! It safeguarded the secret of my double identity!” Thanks for trying to kill me, Captain Cold and Heat Wave! Now I can keep lying to my wife! 
• Barry drops the crooks off at police headquarters and then goes home to celebrate his one-month anniversary with his wife. 
• Iris: “Oh, Barry–Darling! Happy anniversary!” 
• Barry (thinking): “My identity secret is still safe–but for how long?  Only time will tell!” TELL YOUR WIFE, YOU IDIOT!!!!
• Total panel time for Miss Fashion Gem? Two panels. By the time the Flash shows up, Captain Cold and Heat Wave don’t even seem to remember that they’re presumably fighting over her at all! That definitely makes her the least relevant stalkee-girlfriend so far. 
• Also, if this story is to be believed, Heat Wave and Captain Cold could make a mint selling their technology to hospitals. Flash’s sprained ankle gets healed in what seems like less than a minute! 

Heat Wave and Captain Cold’s never-ending puns are a lot of fun, and they do a good job of carrying the issue. Watching Barry work around his injury is also interesting (even if the solution makes science weep). However, the issue is slightly undercut by Barry’s rather frustrating refusal to just TELL HIS WIFE HE’S THE FLASH ALREADY! (Worse, it’ll take eight more issues before he finally tells her the truth.) 

Pets:

• When Mark Mardon was a kid, his brother, Clyde, had a dog named Thunder. In most families, the dog would have belonged to both children, but Mark’s parents made it pretty clear that the dog only belonged to their golden child. 
• Mick Rory’s family owned three cows, two Clydesdale horses, a donkey, a mule, two dogs (Spot and Rover), four cats (Fluffy, Stripey, Mouser, and Mr. Tuxedo), nine sheep, six goats, six to ten pigs (at any given time) and many, many chickens, ducks, and turkeys. They also raised bees. 
• Digger didn’t have any pets growing up, but his family did raise a LOT of sheep. His legal father (Ian Harkness) also had a dog named Fang, who liked Digger about as much as Ian did. Digger speculates that Fang was at least part dingo. 
• Roscoe Dillon’s mother, Rosa, owned a Persian named Priscilla (an anniversary gift from her wealthy husband). Unfortunately for Rosa, Priscilla was even less fond of being hugged than Roscoe was. Roscoe, by contrast, got along splendidly with the cat. Both hated crowds, loud noises, and being touched. Roscoe remembers Priscilla fondly as his most understanding family member. 
• Neither Sam nor Evan had any pets as kids. Sam’s apartment didn’t allow pets; Miss McCulloch would’ve loved for her kids to be able to have pets but didn’t have enough room for them in the orphanage. 
• Hartley’s parents owned a number of thoroughbred horses, several show dogs and show cats, and a wall-sized aquarium full of exotic fish. Most of these were more for show than anything else; Hartley wasn’t supposed to touch any of them without explicit permission. On the one and only occasion a rat made it inside the Rathaway estate, he befriended it…only for his mother to promptly have it killed when she discovered it. Now, of course, Hartley is the proud owner of at least six rats. 
• James Jesse didn’t exactly have pets growing up…but since he got to spend time with lions, tigers, elephants, camels, bears, monkeys, and horses in the circus, he didn’t really care all that much. Putting your head in a lion’s mouth is cooler than having a puppy any day. 
• Leonard and Lisa Snart once made the mistake of bringing home a kitten from a neighbor. Lisa named it Gabriela and was thrilled with her new pet….but when Larry Snart came home and saw the kitten, he promptly drowned it in front of his children. A few years later, Larry brought home a pit bull puppy…and predictably abused it until it was the nightmarish guard dog he wanted. The dog didn’t have a proper name (Larry just called it “you mutt”), but the neighborhood nicknamed it the Hellhound. It lived for a few years before Larry tripped over it whilst drunk and killed it in a rage (although not before the dog did a number on him). This dog is also the reason that both Leonard and Lisa are scared of large dogs. 
• Barry Allen owned a cat named Fluffernutter and a dog named Streak the Wonder Dog (after Green Lantern Alan Scott’s dog).

School headcanons: 

• Mark and Clyde Mardon both ended up being placed into a Spanish I class in their Freshman year of high school (one of Clyde’s classes was cancelled abruptly shortly before the start of the school year, and Mark hadn’t been able to decide what electives he wanted to take). This was the only high school course Mark ever earned an A in, mainly because, unbeknownst to the school, both he and Clyde were bilingual and could speak Spanish better than their Spanish teacher. The only downside was that both of them spent a lot of time being bored out of their minds. 
• The one and only time Barry Allen got detention was due entirely to the fact that he got a tardy slip every day for three months. Once the school caught on to the fact that Barry never missed out on any work, they eventually stopped giving him tardy slips at all, instead simply accepting that Barry being late to everything was a fact of nature. 
• Wally West once got detention for using his super speed to leave the school grounds in order to get Indian food…from India. 
• Leonard Snart never once passed a course (he slept through or outright skipped almost every class), but he was never held back a year. This was because most of the faculty wrote him off as a lost cause by the time he was seven years old. This is why Len can barely read and write and knows almost nothing about literature or history. That being said, Len doesn’t have any particular animosity towards the school system. It did give him and his sister free food, after all. (This free food also resulted in Len having a nearly perfect attendance record before he dropped out. He might not have learned anything, but he wasn’t going to miss out on lunch.) 
• If Sam Scudder had gone to a better school, he probably would’ve been put in either a gifted program of some sort or have been skipped a few grades ahead; he is and always has been extremely intelligent. As it was, he went through all of school (until he dropped out) believing that he was just reasonably clever and kind of a nerd; he still doesn’t really realize how intelligent he actually is. 
• Roscoe was likewise very intelligent, although the fact that he was on the autism spectrum before it was widely recognized meant that he often got himself into trouble at school. When he had teachers who liked him and were understanding of his quirks, he did very well in school, but most of his teachers were demanding and critical. As a result, he didn’t always perform as well as he would have been able to under optimal conditions. Also not helping matters was the fact that his father would denigrate his son for any grade less than an A (no matter the context). He still did well enough to graduate high school with a strong GPA and be accepted into college, but it wasn’t until college that he ever felt comfortable in school. He graduated college (a year early, due to his desire to please his father) with a B.S. in engineering…only for his father to criticize him for not having a high enough college GPA, for not graduating at the top of his class, and for having changed his major from business school (which he had hated) to engineering. Shortly afterwards, Roscoe fell into a particularly bad manic episode, which in turn was a major influence in his decision to become the Top. 

blissful-indigo:

As I write this, I’m packing a bag to go stay at my boyfriend’s place for the next few days. The Pacific Northwest is about to get dangerously hot for the next several days (over 100° F) and Seattle specifically is the least air-conditioned city in the US. The majority of people here do not have AC and this heat wave is bad news for us. I’m especially concerned about homeless people in the area who don’t have anywhere to go.

I live in a top floor apartment with no AC and I physically cannot stay here once the heat begins to really hit tomorrow. I don’t have the right type of windows for a portable AC unit and my floor fans and space coolers provide minimal relief. Hotels in the area and many surrounding cities are all booked, so my boyfriend and I are going to deal with the heat as best we can and find cool places to go. He doesn’t have AC either, but doesn’t have the top-floor struggles I do, so it’s safer for me to stay there. Hopefully this wave doesn’t linger too long into next week.

Update: today is the hottest of the days. I went to the office today to work in air conditioning and my boyfriend is doing the same. The food in his freezer is melting although we have electricity and we’re worried about losing everything and trying to rearrange the food and eat some of it. This is bad.

As I write this, I’m packing a bag to go stay at my boyfriend’s place for the next few days. The Pacific Northwest is about to get dangerously hot for the next several days (over 100° F) and Seattle specifically is the least air-conditioned city in the US. The majority of people here do not have AC and this heat wave is bad news for us. I’m especially concerned about homeless people in the area who don’t have anywhere to go.

I live in a top floor apartment with no AC and I physically cannot stay here once the heat begins to really hit tomorrow. I don’t have the right type of windows for a portable AC unit and my floor fans and space coolers provide minimal relief. Hotels in the area and many surrounding cities are all booked, so my boyfriend and I are going to deal with the heat as best we can and find cool places to go. He doesn’t have AC either, but doesn’t have the top-floor struggles I do, so it’s safer for me to stay there. Hopefully this wave doesn’t linger too long into next week.

d e s e r t h e a t