Fan Attacks
I have to admit I have the same problem Michael Patterson has with his ceiling fan. I have the short dangling chains that bounce against the side of the fan and make a tinkling noise when they hit and it can keep me up at nights. The solution is either to turn the fan off, which is what I usually do, or to buy the longer chains with some sort of weight on the bottom to keep the chain from moving as much with the fan motion. Unfortunately, my wife hates the long chains for aesthetic reasons, so the only solution available to me is to turn the fan off.
The strip was a kind of a nothing strip, so it was hard to snark without simply making fun of the extraordinarily stupid way Mike solved his problem. However, aprilp_katje’s comment about the noise sounding like Mike’s typing inspired me to do a little Iris / Jim / squirrel monthly letter snark (a subject virtually untouched by most Foob commentaries). Then I had Howard set up the Jeremy snark of Becky confusing someone’s bizarrely hyphenated last name “Winkle-Wonkle” with the fan sound effects of “Tinkle-Tonkle.” The results were not particularly satisfactory. I did learn that Brunswick Stew did not originate in Brunswick or New Brunswick, and so there was a learning element of today’s tour snarking. The radio station and newspaper mentioned for interviewing Becky are real, as is the musical festival for which she played, not that anyone cares about such accuracies except me.
Ironically, one of Howard air conditioner repairs for the bus comes true in tomorrow’s strip. Water accumulation is a sign of leakage in one of the ducts. Of course, as I look at the Toronto weather conditions on www.weather.com, I see the evening low temperatures and many of the high temperatures are below the temperature we cool our house in Arizona. I am having a real hard time believing the point of the strip that the nighttime temperatures in Toronto are too hot for kids to sleep. They must be used to really cold temperatures in their house at night. Now if Michael and family were in Arizona, like I am, I might have a little more sympathy.
The strip was a kind of a nothing strip, so it was hard to snark without simply making fun of the extraordinarily stupid way Mike solved his problem. However, aprilp_katje’s comment about the noise sounding like Mike’s typing inspired me to do a little Iris / Jim / squirrel monthly letter snark (a subject virtually untouched by most Foob commentaries). Then I had Howard set up the Jeremy snark of Becky confusing someone’s bizarrely hyphenated last name “Winkle-Wonkle” with the fan sound effects of “Tinkle-Tonkle.” The results were not particularly satisfactory. I did learn that Brunswick Stew did not originate in Brunswick or New Brunswick, and so there was a learning element of today’s tour snarking. The radio station and newspaper mentioned for interviewing Becky are real, as is the musical festival for which she played, not that anyone cares about such accuracies except me.
Ironically, one of Howard air conditioner repairs for the bus comes true in tomorrow’s strip. Water accumulation is a sign of leakage in one of the ducts. Of course, as I look at the Toronto weather conditions on www.weather.com, I see the evening low temperatures and many of the high temperatures are below the temperature we cool our house in Arizona. I am having a real hard time believing the point of the strip that the nighttime temperatures in Toronto are too hot for kids to sleep. They must be used to really cold temperatures in their house at night. Now if Michael and family were in Arizona, like I am, I might have a little more sympathy.
posted by howard at 9:35 PM
5 Comments:
Okay, can you tell I'm all worked up? :)
Nah, not at all! ;)
One of my early childhood memories was that the only air conditioner in the whole house was in my parents' bedroom--I remember going in there to cool off.
Oh, it gets plenty hot in Toronto, and the main problem is the humidity (My sister, in St. Paul, is further north than I am: Toronto's weather is pretty much like New Jersey's). Right now, though, the temperature is a fairly manageable high of 26C. Mike an' Dee are just hopeless at dealing with the heat, as well as with everything else.
qnjones,
I can't tell for Toronto how much of an effect the humidity has. I remember living in Colorado in the summertime after living for 3 years in Texas, and I listened to the Coloradans complain bitterly how hot it was when the temperature peaked 80 degrees Fahrenheit. But at nighttime, the temperature still dropped into the 60s, and was quite comfortable. Both temperatures felt great to me, because in Texas, it would go above 100 and cool to 90 degrees Fahrenheit at night.
I will grant that people in Toronto think it is hot and miserable, but if I were there, I doubt I would agree. www.weather.com tells me that their high temperatures are in the 70s and low 80s and their low temperatures are in the 50s and 60s, but I am sure it can get hotter than what I see on the 10 day forecast.
In Arizona, 100 is a nice summer temperature, but when it gets to 115 degrees, then it feels like you are walking in an oven outside. I have not traveled anywhere in the Midwest or the Northeast that can match it. When my family was in Glendale, Arizona for my boy's summer camp, the daytime temperature was around 120 degrees. Fortunately, Tucson doesn't get quite that hot.
My childhood memories of a window air conditioning unit in the summers of North Carolina are a little different. It was in the living room and it was turned on only for guests, because it consumed too much electricity. It was also incredibly noisy, so my parents could hear if I ever turned it on. So, the unit rarely got used. It was like forbidden fruit. I and my sisters waited for moments when my parents left the house.
qnjones,
Mmm. Sweet corn. Sounds good to me.
Humidity makes a difference. I have lived in humid places before, where it felt like I was walking through soup outside and during the day, it could be pretty miserable. In Texas, I could soak my shirt with sweat just walking from my work building to my car in the parking lot, and it barely cooled down at night. This strip is taking place in the middle of the night. What is it like where you are at night? Does it cool down at all?
We just got back from Myrtle Beach, which was pretty humid (right next to the ocean), but at night, when the temperature dropped to the 60s F, (like Toronto), it was pretty pleasant outside.
To satisfy myself about this issue, I started looking at on-line weather data for Toronto.
Average High for the month of July: 26° C = 79 ° F
with Heat Index for 100% humidity is 30° C, 87° F
with Heat Index for current Toronto humidity of 72% is 28° C, 83° F
The Arizonan in me is still saying, “Not so hot,” particularly when you consider that temperature will drop during the night. Now let’s go for the big time.
Record High for the month of July: 36° C in 1988 = 97 ° F
with Heat Index for 100% humidity is 78° C, 172° F
with Heat Index for current Toronto humidity of 72% is 55° C, 131° F
Now you are talking some heat. I will have to presume that Mike is experiencing some kind of heat wave more than the average Toronto heat for the month of July, to justify any sympathy from me.
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