Heat

If you've never heard Will Ackerman, he's one of the original Windham Hill musicians. The song Last Day At The Beach is one that I've only heard recently, but I really took to it. It is such a simple melody, but it really catches the listener. At least it did me. And I found it to be rather appropriate for a day like today, as hot, humid, hazy, and nasty as it is turning out to be. Bad enough that rather than be outside in it I would rather be indoors in air conditioning.

At the moment we are pool-less; the liner is in the middle of being replaced due to huge amounts of water loss. I don't know when the new liner will be here, but I'm hoping it will be soon. The meterology experts (and I use that term loosely) say that cooler weather will be here by the weekend.

It's so funny - as human beings we complain about extremes: extreme cold, heat, gas prices, attitudes. I know that it is part of human nature to be this way, but one would think that as adaptable as we are, we could adapt to extremes, too. Perhaps in the future we will have to be more adaptable, especially if we are in the midst of climate change and we as a society don't do something to fix it. Then we will have to adapt to extremes, like it or not.

As far as the conditions are concerned, currently it is 100.4 degrees F in the shade of my deck. It is 75.9 F inside with the air on. Where do you think I'm going to stay?

And now for something completely different..... At one time I used to follow pro wrestling, if for no other reason than it is mindless fun most of the time; the story lines are contrived, the action is, more or less, real, and the characters are larger than life. When I read about the death of WWE wrestler Chris Benoit, it was a reminder to me of how fragile even the strongest characters can be. In the ring he was known as the "Rabid Wolverine" because of his fierce nature and his ability to dominate his opponents with seeming ease. Out of the ring he had a reputation of being distant, although there were times that he could be especially kind to his younger fans. What was hard to read about was that he allegedly murdered his wife and 7 year-old son before hanging himself, supposedly as much as a day later. Some reports say that he had prescription anabolic steroids in the house; if this is so, it would perhaps explain his actions.

"Roid Rage", as it is known, is a horrible thing to see. I've witnessed it before, and it is quite frightening. I would put it in the same category as PCP, in terms of the effect it has on the brain. The user can become extremely combative, and physically they don't know their own stength. It also can cause paranoia and incredible anger to manifest itself; once we had a call for a Psych patient who, it turned out, was using anabolic steroids. He was incredibly pumped up, and he was mad. He didn't want anything to do with us, and ultimately it took 4 police officers, 3 firefighters, and my partner and myself to subdue him, and it was barely that. He was able to hold most of us off. It took 5mg of Haldol and very strong restraint to keep him down. Once we got him to the hospital, they used more medication to subdue him. It was awful.

On that note, I'm going to get in front of the air. Stay cool.