Hot Again on Wednesday

The first sound I heard this morning as my feet touched the carpet was a big booming blast of thunder. I worried about the rain, whether I could drive on the grass or would it be muddy and whether people would show up for my press event.

Got going, got there on time in intermittent rain. Then the sun came out and it was actually pleasant, but was growing hotter as the minutes passed. Event went really well, had three meetings and then another big event. Gene Cernan, the astronaut and "last man on the moon" (also the name of his book) was the speaker.

I had a direct connection to that since a colleague was asked to be Gene's "handler" when he came to an aviation museum to speak. He asked my colleague if he knew anyone associated with my client company and my colleague said yes. That was me. So one thing led to another and Gene (I should be calling him Captain Cernan) got my client's equipment for his airplane, he built a relationship with my client so we asked him to speak at this customer event. He was amazing, interesting; everyone could have heard him talk forever as he really describes in lay terms what it's like to walk on the moon. We gave everyone an autographed copy of his book.

By the time it was over and cleaned up the venue, it was 6 pm and I got back to my car (conveniently parked close by thank god due to my car pass) and it was an oven. The thermometer on the dashboard (see photo below) read 105 degrees, and I believe every degree of it.

I was supposed to have dinner with someone, but I canceled. I was/am just too worn out.

On with the photos:

You can see how dry everything is here with the leaves already turning due to lack of rain.

Here's the book, and if you are at all interested in space, I think you'd enjoy it because he writes very clearly and answers things the average joe wonders about.



This illustrates how I dodged a bullet. I so rarely run out of food at an event, but today we ran out of drinks because everyone was so dehydrated due to the heat. So the program had just begun and I asked the caterer if they could get me more water quickly -- 100 bottles -- I didn't even ask the client for permission -- and they said they could get the water there in 15 minutes, which they did. Meanwhile, when the program was over and people were leaving and getting their autographed book, they also were offered a bottle of cool water to go which looked as if we had done this on purpose. I would definitely have water to go again if it were appropriate for an event. So it was a good way to turn a bad thing into a good thing.



This was the event with Captain Cernan speaking and we had about 100 people who are this client's customers.

So this caught my eye when I turned on the car and was waiting for some cooling to take place. At first I thought it was just because the car was in the sun, but all the way back to the hotel, it dropped first to 102 and then to 98. Very hot.