Cool runnings

It's air-conditioning season in the GZ! You might also know it as sticky-muggy-sweltering-it-rains-every-day-and-when-it's-not-raining-life-is-a-mushy-pile-of-sweat season. Now, I am not here to complain about the heat because as anyone who knows me knows I am sort of mystified by all the folk who are always complaining about the weather all the time. I mean, it's like, well, summer is hot. Winter is cold. This does happen regularly -- every year, in fact -- and yet they always seem so surprised... Anyway, no, I am not going to lament the fact that the summer rainy season in a sub-tropical place is steamy and hot because that would just be silly. I am just going to point out something, just this one teeny little thing. OK? Ready, China, are you listening? Here goes.

It's not that I don't like the feeling of the cool blast of air that I feel through the wide open doors of the department store/office/coffee shop ATM vestibule when I'm walking down the sidewalk. Like today, when I was running and all gloriously hot and sweaty and I trotted by the Bank of Whatever and felt a little arctic blast for a second. Yeah, that felt great and all, but here's the thing: every time it happens I kind of freak out a little bit and lose a little piece of my soul. I come from a place that would actually not exist as we know it without air conditioning (Phoenix!) and I come from a family of engineers, several of them electrical engineers, and they design power plants for a living and coordinate all sorts of mysterious power grid supply things, and in particular I have a parent who worked for Arizona Public Service, electricity provider extraordinaire. I was raised to shut that door quickly quickly quickly no that's not quick enough!! if the air conditioner was running (which, in Phoenix that could be like nine months out of the year. Maybe more.)  So I'm just pretty much blown away (see what I did there) every time this whole "Wow! Feel that A/C blast through the open doors out to us here on the sidewalk!" thing happens.

The thought does occur to one that if you people would maybe, you know, just kind of shut the !@#$&* doors you could save a whooooooooooooole lot of energy and maybe you wouldn't have actually needed to build that gargantuan mighty largest ever Three Gorges Dam and stuff. Just a thought.