Sometimes I love this place

Sometimes it irritates me.

I was walking down Mass Ave this evening. The weather was nice, and I had a little time, so I walked part of the way home instead of taking the bus. One of the bus stops I passed had a "No Loitering" sign next to it. The whole purpose of a bus stop is to have people standing around and waiting! I don't know if the City of Cambridge thinks there is some clear distinction between good waiting and bad loitering. It might be set up to provide an excuse for profiling and discrimination, but it's hard to tell.

It reminded me that the commuter bikeway between Davis Square and Alewife goes through Cambridge, which considers it a park. As such, the City of Cambridge has signs up saying that the bikeway closes at sunset. Foot and bicycle traffic tapers off gradually. The path is reasonably well lit, but it's pretty deserted late at night. I was walking down Mass Ave because I thought it was more likely to be safe at the time. On the other side of Alewife, the bikeway is a road with no cars, so towns don't presume to close it. There's still not much traffic late at night (just because not many people have reason to go that way at that hour), but I don't feel like the path has been deliberately abandoned to make it more dangerous.

tonight is not so hot

It's supposedly 60 degrees outside. Fahrenheit. Last night, it was 48F. Of course, I'm not outside. I'm in my apartment, where the room temperature is above 90F. I don't have a thermometer that will measure higher room temperatures than that. Not that quantifying it would help. The radiators have been successfully turned off. The windows are open, which helps a little. The air conditioner is set on "fan," which helps a little more. I hesitate to turn the air conditioner on "cool." It's only the middle of May. It's only 60F!!! (How on earth will I survive the summer? How will I afford the summer?) I suspect there might be a problem with one of my downstairs neighbors cranking up the heat or doing a lot of baking, but I'm not quite upset enough about it to go knocking on strangers' doors in the middle of the night. If I wait until tomorrow and call the landlord, I'm afraid I'll just look stupid...tomorrow is supposed to have hot weather, of course the apartment will be hot. Duh.

My apartment is challenging to cool, even when there isn't a lot of unexplained heat pouring into it. I live on the top floor of a brick building, where hot air rises. It's impossible to put an air conditioner in a window because all the windows are the kind that slide open sideways, and don't open very far. (Casement windows?.) Some time ago, before I moved in, the landlord cut a hole through the living room wall and installed a small air conditioning unit. This air conditioner is less powerful and efficient than the good small window units sold now (or the medium-quality small window units,) but it could probably cool a small room. Fortunately for many purposes, but unfortunately for the poor overworked air conditioner, my living room is a rather large room. The kitchen and the hallway connect without doors, so the only way to reduce the strain at all is to close off the bathroom and bedroom, and spend as much time as possible in the living room near the a/c unit.

In the winter, when I was having so much trouble with the intense cold, I didn't want to think about how miserable it was to deal with heat and humidity. It's not acutely painful like the cold, but it gets in the way. I can't sleep properly. My hands stick to the paper, or to the computer (or the computer overheats and shuts down.)

Suggestions are welcome. On a night like this, a window fan in the bedroom would probably help. I think I could get one that would fit. Last summer, there were an awful lot of nights when I wouldn't have wanted a fan to bring in more sweltering air from outside to make the air conditioner work harder. I don't know if there's some kind of fan arrangement that could make the air conditioner more efficient. If it were a window unit, I'd just replace it. But it's not my appliance, and I don't really have the option.