<div style="float: left; margin-right: 5px">
 <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcia-s/198363387/" title="photo sharing"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/71/198363387_0388d31485_m.jpg" alt=""/></a>
</div> We were on our way to Portland (where it most assuredly was <strong>not</strong> a dry heat) when James snapped this photo of the rental car's outside temp thermometer. It's been a hot one here on the Wasatch front, with <a href="http://www.weather.com" target="blank">Weather.com</a> often showing temperatures of 112 ("feels like 109"). Finally, after a lifetime in the hot-n-sticky South, I'm experiencing the proverbial dry heat.

I'm accustomed, in summer, to highs in the upper 90s&mdash;and to feeling like I'm being smothered in a hot, wet towel as soon as I step outside air conditioning. Perhaps I shouldn't say "accustomed to," since I never really got used to this. For 37 years down South, every summer was a new, horrifying shock to my system. I've found the summer weather here much more tolerable. It's hot, to be sure, but it takes a few minutes and/or a little exertion before you start to sweat. When you step into the Utah shade, it's noticeably cooler (unless the "shade" happens to be a car parked in the sun). The temperature here in the land of no humidity is directly related to the intensity of the sun; if you can block the sun, you can get some relief. Not so where I'm from! 

If you're me ("you prefer the dead months," a friend once told me), summer would not be summer did it not cause some discomfort (maybe I have  reverse <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_affective_disorder" target="blank">SAD</a>). Here in the West, summer's special torture is the number of daylight hours. For the past two or three months, it hasn't even begun to get dark here until 9 pm. Checking Weather.com (again&mdash;since we have no television, and I never bother to listen to the radio, it's my source for weather information), I see that the sunrise/sunset times for today are 6:25 am and 8:42 pm. So, the sun <strong>should</strong> set before nine, but that's still <strong>over 14 hours of daylight</strong>. It's killing me!