The Hot Season

I'm not sure if it's official, but it might as well be: the North Carolina Hot Season has begun. A year ago I was down this way on a long weekend trip to secure a home and get my foot in the door at architecture firms, and I remember the folks here telling me that the Hot Season had just started abruptly a few days before my arrival. I'm not sure it's been as abrupt this year... we've been consistently in the 80's for a few weeks now, except for a few odd days of 70's or (egad) upper 60's. But it looks like the transition to typical highs in the 90's is just around the corner, and will probably last until late September. You know, when summer is actually supposed to end?

I've heard a lot about the heat down here before and since my move, usually by northerners who have to imagine that there's something wrong with the place, or from the small scattering of folks who lived down here once and found the heat and humidity remarkable. Having lived through the better part of last summer and now on the cusp of another, I have to say: yes, it gets fucking hot. And humid. And if I was an outdoor laborer, it would definitely change my perception of the livability here. But just the other day, for whatever reason, I was thinking about Halloween. Whenever I thought about fall holidays up north, it was always followed by: yeah, fun, but ugh--then winter. Now? Now I think: yeah, fun--oh yeah, and it'll be nice out! What a different world when some of the best holidays of the year are no longer mired in the dread of an imminent horrible winter! So, we bake during the summer like many do (Midwest, Las Vegas, your summers suck, too), and go for cold drinks and dinner under shady canopies, enjoying the excitement of seemingly daily, quickly-passing thunderstorms. And then we celebrate the end of the heat with an autumn that isn't a bummer.

Of course, with the return of warm weather come the side effects--bugs and mold. As I write this, I have several ants inexplicably crawling on my hand. I have an earwig that has made a home in the crack on the side of my laptop monitor (still waiting for the grand zap and puff of smoke that will be the simultaneous end of him and my laptop). The fuzzy red spiders have returned, as have the daddy long-legs. The shrimp/grasshopper/frog hybrid family I mentioned in an earlier post is prolific and fat; they've taken to exploring the exhaust pipe from their lair into my bathroom. And unless I keep the air conditioner set way too low for my budget, the moisture in the air will cause my refrigerator to grow a mold beard. Have you ever sprayed down your refrigerator with shower cleaner? It does the trick, but you won't be hungry for a while.

I haven't been able to enjoy the warm weather and communing with my seasonal "friends" as much as I would like, because I am preparing for my second Architecture Registration Exam--Structural Systems--which I will take June 9th. I've spent way too long studying, unfortunately, so I'm already starting to lose content despite a rigorous study schedule. I've done fairly well on Kaplan's practice exams, but I've lost my faith in them almost completely--they get answers to their own practice exams wrong. I didn't do as well on the NCARB practice questions (NCARB controls exam content). But, assuming I don't black out at the exam, I should be able to eek it out. And if not, I get six months to beat myself up about it before I take it again!

So, that's this month in a nutshell.