I woke up sweating around 4:25 pm yesterday, on July 22nd, 2006. There was almost no air in the room, and everything was hot: the walls, the bed, and even the steel door knobs. The air conditioner (AC) vent was throwing out hot air, so at first I wondered if it had committed suicide again. However, I noticed that the TV, home phone and the DSL modem were also not working properly; they kept turning on and off every second, as if the connection to the main circuit board was being interrupted or suffering heavily. For a while I thought it was a group suicide event, with all the electric appliances ending their misery in a desperate attempt to escape their confinement in my house. It turned out to be a power outage instead, with my area being one of the few places in the entire state experiencing huge power outages. For about 35 minutes, electricity was acting weird, sending many circuits in the house to their graves. It was so hot that even wearing glasses seemed to be adding more heat to my body. There was no point in leaving the house to go out, since it was almost as hot outside as it was inside. Half an hour later the electricity came back to normal. Everything was working fine except the AC; it was still pumping out hot air.

All of Southern California is experiencing record breaking heat while also witnessing a record breaking electricity usage for the entire state of California, with everyone turning on their AC at full power. At the same time, the skies are being lit up by lightning strikes every few minutes. I was hoping that such lightning strikes would bring in rain, or even a tsunami; however, it seems the lightning strikes are just there as teasers for things that might never come this month, just like a good teaser trailer for a movie that fails to deliver anything good.

Radio stations and TV channels at this very moment are telling all people to conserve water and energy in their homes. The news reporters are having a marathon with this story, with news channels and reporters talking more about how people are uncomfortable in the heat in California than talking about the 650 confirmed deaths and half as many people missing in the second big tsunami that hit Indonesia last week on July 17th. What could be more important than talking about 650 people dying far away? The damned scorching heat in Southern California, of course! It’s as if no one expected California to witness any heat this year; maybe people expected snowflakes everywhere during the summer.

Since my AC wasn’t working all day, I decided to take my chances and go outside to seek refuge elsewhere for a while. I had two choices: I could either go to a nearby Fry’s electronic megastore, or I could go visit my neighbor Mickey Mouse at his workplace nearby, a bank called Disneyland. Such places are the best places to go to take refuge from the heat, since such big business stores rarely suffer power outages, and they also never get told to conserve energy by any radio station or tv channel, or even state officials. Disneyland costs money to get into, so I decided to go to Fry’s and do some shopping also. In addition to avoiding being cooked alive, I prefered paying money and getting something in return to paying money for hugging a big mouse. Throughout the drive the lightning strikes were amazing, shining so bright that one could trace the lightning all the way from the clouds down to their point of impact for at least a few seconds.

Fast forward several hours, and here I am now, back from Fry’s since they don’t allow sleepovers. I’m writing this entry with the fan blowing right at me. The AC vent is right above me, though I doubt anything will come through it other than spiders who will soon raid every house in Southern California seeking refuge from the scorching heat outside. I just got back after buying a lot of cold drinks, and even that didn’t help cool down my body, let alone any room in the house. I’m sure the mouse is sleeping at Disneyland with a working AC though, so not everything in Southern California is on fire.

What do you think about this? Are you also suffering the beauty of the heat in your area? Or are you making snowballs in your room while reading this entry?