A Weekend in Hell... But At Least Hell Has Beer...

Sweet merciful crap.

Summer didn't creep up on me this year. It hit me in the face like a sockful of change.

It was a rather wet, cooler-than-normal May. The first week into June, temperatures have been below seasonal. Yesterday, the temperature only hit a high of 19°C (with highs of 23°C being the norm).

Today, a record was set here in Toronto when it reached a high of 33°C in the early afternoon. Being Toronto, it's never a dry heat. It was fucking humid too. When I left for the office this morning, it was a bearable 21°C. When I walked out of the building, on my way home, at around 3:00pm, the air was chewable.

The sun set about a half-hour ago, so the temperature's finally starting to drop. I just drew back the blinds in my living room and cracked open the doors to my balcony to test the air. It's still about seven degrees cooler in my apartment than it is outside. It's still only just below 30°C.

The entire weekend is supposed to be like this.

Given the May we had, I didn't think I'd have to start my summer coping mechanisms so soon. I figured I'd have, at least, until the end of June. The main thing is trying to keep my apartment cool without air-conditioning. I have a west-facing unit, so the afternoon sunlight usually heats it up like you wouldn't believe. This is great in the winter. Summer? Not so much. Anytime the weather is forecast to go above 28°C or so, I shut all the windows and doors to the outside -- ones I usually keep open for air circulation -- before I leave for work. I also close all the blinds to keep the sunlight out of the apartment. I end up coming home to an environment akin to a cave, but it's more than worth it to keep the apartment's ambient temperature anywhere from five- to eight-degrees below the outside temperature.

Just to be clear, I have air-conditioning. I just don't like using it. I take great pride in the fact that I managed to get through an entire, sweltering summer last year without having to use my air-conditioning at all. In fact, it's been two years of minimal air-conditioning use -- I only used it two or three days in 2006, when I had somebody staying with me during the summer. I'd like to say that it's for purely altruistic, environmental reasons --that it's my sacrifice (and what a sacrifice it is, given my well-known aversion to heat!) to minimise energy usage during the times when our energy grid is at its most stretched. Unfortunately, it's also about me being a pragmatic, Chinese cheapskate. I pay for my own electricity. Wanton use of my air conditioning doubles my electricity usage during the summer.

Another coping mechanism is beer. I hate the summer, but if I have to endure it, there are few summer experiences that I enjoy more than cooling myself down with an ice-cold beer. Since this heat wave came on relatively suddenly, I had no beer in the house. The first thing I did, once I got home, was to get in the car and make a trip to the Beer Store. I thought I'd be able to make a quick dash in-and-out. I'd left work early. It was barely 4:00pm. I expected it to be quiet. It was nuts. The parking lot was full, and I was lined up behind twelve people. Then, after I'd placed my order, I waited around for a good ten minutes for a guy to get my cases from the back. I asked one of the girls at the checkout whether it was usually this busy on a Friday afternoon, or whether it might be the heat-wave. She thought it was the heat wave. Apparently, I'm not the only one that uses beer as a coping mechanism.

Speaking of beer, I had a stunning realisation the other day. I was up in Collingwood two weekends ago, with the family, and was standing in the Beer Store with my cousin from Vancouver. We were purchasing a case of beer (actually, he was purchasing since he'd won the Poker tournament the night before) and I was actually studying the pricing chart for the first time in years. Usually, when I buy beer, I go with my tried and true standards: Steam Whistle, Sleemans, Rickard's, Hoegaarden. While scanning the beer selection on the pricing chart, I noticed, for the first time, that the Beer Store carried Unibroue products.

I love Unibroue beers, but I'd never had them outside of Quebec. A standard of any trip up to Montreal was to hit a dépanneur close to the hotel, picking up a couple of 750mL bottles of Maudite or La Fin du Monde. The last time I had any Unibroue products was back in 2006, when I was up in Montreal for my thirtieth birthday. Greg, Shahid, Rob and I pounded back a few bottles before going to the Leafs-Habs game -- getting pre-buzzed to save ourselves from having to buy too many over-priced Bell Centre beverages. Good times.

Finding out that I could pick up this beer in Ontario was a real eye-opener. Up in Collingwood, I picked up a six pack, intending to share the experience of the beer with my cousins, who'd never tried it before. Unfortunately, I never got even one of those beers. During the dinner where I finally broke open the pack, my Dad opened a few bottles of really good wine, so I stuck to that. Andrea, Lemuel and Lewis really enjoyed the beer, though.

I walked out of the Beer Store today with a twelve-pack of Hoegaarden, and a twelve-pack of La Fin du Monde. La Fin du Monde is a tasty, blond beer. Great for the summer. The 9% alcohol helps one to forget the heat real quickly too.

So now I'm somewhat cooled down, drunk, and this beer tastes just as good as I remembered.