What Palm Springs is for

Because I got sick a few days ago and had a bit of a crisis.

Apparently, we've been running up a hyoooge electric bill this past month here in PS, and this is just for June. Or even part of May. Summer has barely begun, even if we've already had a workweek run of 115+ temps. It's gonna be a hot one.

Oh, and huge? I mean verging on $1500 for the month is my guess. This is awful. We've thought we were good and frugal and all, keeping our temperature at 73. No. That's for Denver. People we talked to were aghast our temperature was that low. The recommendation was 78. At lowest. Well, that's come to bite us in the ass.

I'm frightened awaiting the actual electric bill. In the meantime, we took the AC up to 78 immediately and boosted the fan, which overnight dried out my throat and gave me a quick summer cold. I've been battling it like crazy with hefty doses of cayenne, garlic, and horseradish, which all have done wonders, particularly the garlic—six cloves of it yesterday alone.

Two days ago was a blear of depression wherein Dennis proposed cutting our losses early and hightailing it back to Denver for the rest of the summer. It didn't take long for me to put the kibosh on that. After all, I wanted to give this place a try. If Dennis and Mark are thinking about this for a retirement idyll, let's experience it at its hottest; we've already seen it at its winter and spring glory. That's my take. Besides, holy shit do we already have a lot of stuff here.

In the meantime, here's the summer. It will be hot. We will have to make do with it at 78...and possibly even hotter before it's all over. And figure out some other strategies in the meantime.

Movies

I just watched The Commitments last night for the umpteenth time. But this time around, I watched it knowing that the brunette siren Maria Doyle (now Maria Doyle Kennedy) ended up, years later, the conniving villain Vera Bates on Downton Abbey. And she was great in both roles. I mean, all she did in The Commitments was sing, argue, and make out with Jimmy. To be fair, that's all the three Commitmentettes had to do, and they all were great at it. But Doyle was excellent, and the camera loved her. (The soundtrack formed a minor part of my high school musical experience.)

That's one of the things I figured Palm Springs is good for: watching movies. This is a place to escape during the summer in one way or another. If you can't escape physically, then do something to transport yourself mentally. And that's what movies are for.

I have all my Vogue Film Festival movies ready to go. Links on Amazon, too. Only issue is, the way vast majority of them will cost. Maybe not much, but I figure hey...maybe I can check them out from the library and play them on our handy-dandy DVD player here. Only but that is apparently not working either. So I may either have to figure out how to fix the DVD player or just swallow the cost of these movies. (And maybe get to writing about them too.)

Of course, PS is good for many other things. Pool time. Music. (I have a guitar here and have been taking lessons.) I'd say baking too, but over the summer, where we're trying to keep energy costs down, not so much. I understand now more of the reason behind things like gazpacho and vichyssoise (and even that needs to be boiled at some point).

Fasting

It's a good thing I'm not concerned about my weight. Only over the past week or so have I seen my weight begin to decrease, a month after beginning intermittent fasting to boost my health. And part of this is because I got this cold. Today, for the first time since nearly this time last year, I weighed in below 300. (See my previous post for what else has happened so far.) Anyhow, I need to go shopping for dinner. Get something delicious.