Overheated

I knew it was going to be a hot one today. Temps somewhere around 100 and a heat index of about 115 to 118. Whew!

The night before I stuck a water bottle in the freezer and froze it solid, hoping it wouldn't bust. This morning I stuck in 4 more bottles and two Powerades and got them good and slushy before I left for work. When I got to work I grabbed another unfrozen bottle out of the machine and slammed it down before we hit the yard.

Lt Strong came out and said "I'll be out here all night with you guys. I don't want you moving around. If something happens, call it and we'll deal with it. Otherwise stay in the shade and drink plenty of water."

Fortunately nothing happened. I was so freaking hot I think if I tried to run anywhere I would have just fallen over and melted into the concrete. We kept moving from shady spot to shady spot trying not to fry in the sun.

And those fool inmates were out there running on the track and playing basketball and lifting weights. Captain CJ made it pretty plain: "Let them do what they want to. But when the first idiot falls out from the heat, we are closing the yards!"

None of them fell out. But I thought I might a couple of times. If I was just wearing shorts and a t-shirt and sneakers like the inmates it might have been more bearable. But stuck in that uniform with the duty belt and boots was just miserable.

Luckily for me, Sgt Uncle T got tired of driving himself around and had me get on the cart and chauffeur. That created a little breeze, anyway. And gave me somebody to talk to so I wasn't just standing there feeling miserable.

I saved the frozen bottle for last. When I started on my Del Norte walk it was still frozen almost completely solid. By the time I was done there was about an inch of tepid water left in it.

The girls in the control center were messing with me on the radio. And when i got back up there I said "If I had the energy to take my boot off, I'd pour about a gallon of sweat out of it through this chuck hole! Ten you'd be sorry!"

Either it cooled down quite a bit after I was done or I cooled down some when I got to quit walking. Either way I was a bit more comfortable towards the end of the night, even if I smelled bad. We sat around the picnic table in the pavilion and Sarge and Sausage and the Gray Ham talked about westerns for an hour while I tried desperately to doze and block out the conversation.

I'm not a big fan of westerns, you see.

Okay, so I'm not perfect.

But I survived the night and didn't have to chew my own foot off to get away from the movie chatter so i guess we can chalk up another one in the "Success" column. Yay!

Friday will be Rat Catcher’s Day. Hmm... Isn't that what the cops do? Oh! Different rats. I see. It will also be National Penuche Fudge Day (It's made from brown sugar and usually has pecans in it) and Spoonerism Day. If you get your tang all toungled, you'll get everything bass ackwards and they will all think you are nucking futs!