HOT DAY REFLECTIONS

A terribly hot and windy day today. Not so bad inside this morning, 
with the house cooled down overnight and my being in the nude as 
usual, but right around mid-day I figured I'd soon have to turn on 
the A/C. Also right around mid-day the power cut out so I couldn't. 
Just past 3PM and the weather seems to be thinking about cooling 
off after peaking at 40degC. I've just evacuated the lounge room 
which has sailed past 34degC and into the room at the back of the 
house which is usually slightly cooler in summer (although more 
reliably bitterly cold in winter). It's my workshop for building 
electronics products so I packed up enough equipment to fit in my 
little EeePC 701 notebook and am running it off its (DIY-recelled) 
battery. It can probably do with the exercise seeing as I haven't 
used it seriously since my railway holiday last year.

Without power the only business-related jobs I can do easily aren't 
likely to go well while I'm this hot, so I finally got around to 
catching up on sorting paperwork. That included adding up my six 
monthly average grocery shopping expenses for the last twelve 
months (I guess that means I was overdue getting around to it for 
over six months). To June 2024 my average weekly shop cost $36.93, 
and to December $37.57. Both up from $33.24 and $34.32 in 2023. 
Along goes the march of inflation, although since I seem to be the 
only younger person left who keeps significant long-term savings, 
I've benefited from the higher interest rates too. They finally 
fixed the battery backup at the old phone exchange that my POTS 
landline connects to, and I got a call a little after the power 
went out from the bank. I've got money saved so I must be looking 
for enough to make a deposit on a loan (which they're obviously 
trying to sell). "No? So what are you saving for?" "Just something 
to fall back on", I say. Really I'd like enough that I can live off 
the profits from interest and share dividends/trading. But somehow 
that seems unusual. I should be saving _for_ something, is nobody 
else content with just living modestly and saving for a rainy day? 
Sure the bank's just trying to sell their wares (not that I mind a 
call from a random woman on a hot un-airconditioned day while I'm 
alternating between feeling hot and horny (though by now just 
hot)), but from the media stories on the finances of average 
20-somethings like me (I barely still fit in that bracket) it does 
seem like I'm really an outlier.

OK almost 3:40PM, and the power's still off, but I think the change 
might have come through. I'll see what it's like out the front 
door. Nope, it's hard to tell with how the wind swirls around the 
house, still a northerly-blowing blast furnace out there, but died 
down from the 100Km/hr gusts of earlier. It has got cloudy though, 
and actually I quite like running around naked in a hot wind, just 
not this hot. I'd be nice on the nudist beach, except I want to 
stay close to home to respond to fires (and not go near where any 
fires might start there in the bushland by the coast). Plus I'd 
have to get there in my car where the A/C also doesn't work. I 
visited a couple of times last month, again I wondering why I'm odd 
in that the spot I prefer is where nobody else usually goes, except 
occasional walkers passing by, although it's true that I do like 
being on my own there, but for want of a girlfriend. Last time, 
when the whole of the beach was deserted before I left, I did get 
buzzed by a low-flying police helicopter which went over me then 
turned just behind and went away. That had me double-check the maps 
for the permitted nudist area, but no I was definitely within in, 
maybe I've made it on some cop's 2025 calendar? :)

I've been writing up a post about my trip to Portland for my 
uncle's funeral but haven't had much time too finish it. A few 
pretty women about there but I still don't know how to meet them, 
and probably wouldn't get along if I did. I can't finish that post 
now because it's stuck on my mains-powered desktop PC. Summary is: 
fun (but hot) trip there, frustrating and stressful stay with my 
mother, odd funeral, awkward outer-family interactions, fun and not 
so hot trip back (but quite a tired one by that point).

Got one more stage of my raised car garage/workshop platform 
complete. The truck tray that got hidden behind my shipping 
container darkroom when it arrived is finally out from beside the 
shed and accessible for mounting on top of my support structure (an 
over-built industrial frame for lifting workers from a crane). That 
involved lots of hard winching since I couldn't fit any vehicle in 
the right position to pull it out (along the side of a truck, to 
stop it falling over), then lots of playing to lay it down 
right-side-up using the front-end loader of the farm tractor. Now I 
need it slid onto a truck and reversed up to the frame, but I spent 
the rest of the day preparing the truck I would have used as a 
rough-and-ready fire truck in preparation for today, so now it'll 
stay like that until the end of summer and so will the truck tray. 
Small steps. I probably should take the opportunity to put more 
thought into building the ramp up to it anyway.

Quarter past four and the power's still off. I hope it comes back 
in time for dinner, I don't fancy playing with camp stoves outside 
in gusry hot winds. Might as well keep rambling. Oh wait, no the 
battery percentage has taken a dive. OK, that's that then, off to 
lay around reading more Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence, 
or just thinking of pretty women.

 - The Free Thinker

PS. I'm uploading this the next morning. Reading about the deserts 
of arabia wasn't the best distraction from the heat, but the change 
eventually came through and I camped under a tree with my book for 
a couple of hours while the house cooled down with windows open, 
fighting the flys. Power finally came back at quarter past seven, 
by which time I didn't need the A/C anyway, and I'd already had a 
tinned dinner heated on the camp stove. But I didn't have to get 
the candles out this time at least. The food in the fridge seems to
have survived too - a benefit from my not defrosting it lately. I
really _must_ finish setting up a water supply that works when the
power's off though...