Dakota dear, be glad you're not here!

Here she is, my doggie-niece, Dakota. Colin just sarcastically told me, "Well, that's a nice shot of her ass!" Personally, I just think it's a cute picture. Given that fur coat, I think Dakota is pretty happy to be hanging out with my brother right now.

Dear sweet Lord, is it HOT! 90 degrees to be exact (just over 32 celsius for you European folks). Colin and I don't want to do anything but just lay around in front of the fan. You know, if it got cold and stayed cold for the rest of our time here, that fan STILL would have been worth every penny I paid.

On the bright side, there is a 90 percent chance of rain tomorrow. That should give us a bit of a reprieve. We might even be able to open our window shutters during the day! (OK, so the windows would have to stay shut if it rained hard.) We sit around in the dark these days, allowing our light-colored shutters to reflect away the heat of the glaring sun.

What is most amazing to me -- "culturally" speaking -- is how few places have air conditioning. Further, of those places with a/c, only the Champion grocery store cranks it up. (You wouldn't want all of that butter, cream, and cheese to go bad!) Even my gym, which *seems* to have air conditioning, barely turns theirs on at all. Granted, I wouldn't want to work out in a freezing-cold gym, but I could take a little bit more relief from this nonsense. After all, it can't be good for my waistline if I'm lingering extra long around the dairy case in an attempt to cool off completely.

By the way, for those of you who might not regularly check out "Kat's Korner" (my college roommate's blog), you HAVE to check out this post:

http://katrinasspace.blogspot.com/2006/06/serenade.html

The audio clip is awesome!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go take a cold shower for reasons other than the one that "cold shower" generally conjurs up in the young adult mind.