How to Beat the Heat

First of all, you do your walking in the morning. Even when I went out for my work-out walk around 10, it was incredibly hot...and now humid, too. There were a couple of kids that were out, but I not surprisingly didn't see anyone else. I spent the rest of the morning and afternoon inside, taking down the 4th of July and patriotic holiday decorations and watching the Frank Sinatra vehicle Lady In Cement.

Cement is fairly typical of the slick private eye flicks that came out in the wake of the mid-60s James Bond phenomenon. Sinatra's Tony Rome, a Miami private investigator who hunts for treasure in his spare time, is hired to find a young lady who has disappeared from a local club. When he learns about a woman who was recently found in cement in the Atlantic, he wonders if the two cases may be related...

Though a little rougher around the edges than the sleek Bond films, this is still very much a film of its time. The cops all wear suits; the women have hair the size of Montana. The suits, thankfully, spare us the more garish side of the 60s, and the Miami backdrop is both colorful and unusual. Raquel Welch makes for more intelligent eye candy than one usually finds in these films, and she's surprisingly decent with the older Sinatra.

Work wasn't nearly as fun. My ride to and from work was hot as heck. Though it wasn't crazy-busy, it was steady, and there were a lot of fussy beginning-of-the-month people who won't bag, or buy too much and then put half the order back. One woman complained about her ice cream not being frozen and that we should turn up the air conditioning. First of all, I thought Acme felt fine, especially compared to outside. Second, though I said the lack of air was probably caused by people constantly opening and closing doors, it's more than likely that the store can't afford to turn it up more.

Oh, and some dimwit decided to yell out his car window at me on the way home. I don't know what he said, but it ended with "bicycle" and probably wasn't complimentary. Jerk. What, it's a sin to ride a bike to work now? At least I'm not polluting the air...with my car or my mouth.

Sometimes, I really, really hate people.