Monday, June 22, 2015

Summer in Vegas

Want to visit Hell? Visit Las Vegas! Come enjoy the temperatures that make this valley Satan's winter home!

It's only bearable with air-conditioning. We lost ours at 5 p.m. the day before yesterday, and spent a good portion of yesterday without it, though thankfully while one of the maintenance guys in our apartment complex was fixing it, replacing the exploded compressor and the fan and the fan motor. It makes me appreciate not only having air conditioning, but understanding even more the effect of the heat in this valley during the summer. You'd think the previous two summers would have done that too, but the air conditioning never broke down during either of those summers.

The Saturday morning before this happened, I actually went to the Green Valley Library the earliest I ever have to volunteer, because of the heat. I took the bus to the Green Valley and Sunset intersection, as I usually do, walked to the back door of the library, rang the doorbell, and one of the two children's librarians let me in, they the first two to be there that early. I loved it because not only could I start on my work at 8:00 a.m., before the library opened at 10:00 a.m. (the first part of that work was shelving all the holds which took up all the shelves on one side of a massive, ugly, though reinforced and heavy-duty cart, and one of the shelves on the other side), but the library is completely empty at that hour. I have it all to myself, full run of it if I want. I'm going to do the same next Saturday and the Saturday after and so on until the heat breaks, or if I'm hired by them as a part-time shelver, a position that's opening up in July for August. After a year and a half of volunteering for the library, I'm going to do everything possible to try to snag that job. It may fit in nicely with another job I'm involved in, but don't want to reveal just yet until the papers are signed some time this week. Once they are, I'll finally be able to do what I want to do, having spent an official year in the school district to get to this point (the year and a half I spent as a substitute everything doesn't count according to the district, but that's ok, because the experience I had during that time helped me get here).

So I'm still here, finally cool enough again, but with a lot more happiness on the way.