The Difference Between Here and There
I woke up the other morning, it was uncomfortable and a part of me was completely set to go straight to the store, purchase whatever it was that I needed at whatever cost, come back to the house I am staying in and install it. That's what I was going to do. It didn't occur to me, until later in the day when I'd ignored what I was going to do, that I had lived like 'this' once before in my life.
What occurred to me, and this may not come as a surprise to anyone, is that the difference between Utah and the East Coast is really the difference between arid weather and humid weather. Dry and wet. That's what got me. Since leaving Texas for, uhm, different pastures, I have lived in an arid environment where when people talk about intolerable humidity they are talking about the evaporation of water for an hour or so right after it rains. They are not talking about the pervasive, and constant, amount of water in the air. And to make matters slightly worse, since there's a hurricane and a tropical storm moving up the east coast out of Florida, pushing all sorts of mostly awkward weather patterns into the northeast, it meant that I had to actually live through an increase in the natural humidity for the area.
Not since Texas, and I believe before my mission, have I had to live through humidity like that. It was before my mission when I was working swing shift at a plastics plant, and every third week-ish had to work graveyard which meant sleeping days, did I have to try and get a goodnights rest while somehow expecting the temperature to cool off and the moisture in the air (which makes everything permanently wet) to disappear, have I had the problem I had the other night.
Most nights, the temperature drops, the humidity lessens, you get some sleep, the next morning (or afternoon… you know, whatever) you wake up and the humidity is back, but it's not that bad. Yeah, uhm. Not the other day. It was bad and I wondered how I'd fallen so far as to lose my sense of ability to sleep anywhere under almost any condition? What happened to me? How can I have fallen so far?
What I mean is, I have had to adapt to all sorts of different conditions and situations already (for example people here like to wear their LDS conversion stories on their sleeves and share those stories at the drop of a BoM whereas in Utah you share mission stories at the drop of spittle from the baby in your lap), but on top of adapting to new conditions and situations here I am having to come to terms with humidity, in an extreme, yet again. It's not all bad. I mean, given that I can locate a job where I want to be working and other things come to fruition then purchasing an air-conditioning unit with humidity control won't be bad, regardless of where I choose to work, but at the same time, getting to that point, making that distinction - or whatever, is proving to be a chore in and of itself.
I can deal with humidity just like I can deal with the extremes of heat. There isn't a lot to be said, or implied, in either area. What is interesting to me is that I chose to come and do this. I chose to drive for four days straight to sit in a sweat box and actually enjoy sitting in the sweat box. It's proved to be an interesting adventure and experience.
More later.