"It's too .... hot!"

One of the beautiful things about living right on the lake is the effect of heat on the water. A lovely white-bright mist rises, obscuring the division between sky and surface while seeming to reflect qualities of both, with only the faintest sparkles from the sunlight's reflection off the waves winking through.

That's out there. Here, it's hot, and desperately humid.

The only alteration to uniforms is made at the beginning of May. This would be when we take our digis and - gasp! - roll up the sleeves past the elbow. And that is prescribed wear through the rest of the season. This leads to a rather comical combination on very chilly days - we're not permitted to unroll our sleeves, but we can wear our parkas over them.

The school is not air-conditioned. They're working on it. As our class is on the top floor, we will be the last priority. The first priority is wherever the LCPO is located. Which makes sense, but has us no less miserable. We're allowed to take off the blouse in the classroom, because we wear a solid navy undershirt with it. This actually is considered underwear, and inappropriate outside of one's room back in the barracks.

The barracks are not air-conditioned, but, evidently in the belief that the AC-lords may pay a visit and be pleased to see their humble followers holding out hope for relief by preparing themselves for blessings from freon...we're no longer allowed to open the windows. Because it's air-conditioning season.

When it gets to be three notches past unbearable, we'll sometimes be permitted to wear Navy-issue PT gear, and call that a uniform. By curious coincidence, the buildings that ARE air-conditioned...are the gyms. There are four gyms on base, two of which I frequent (because one has treadmills and one has a pool). And I could now spend all DAY in there, if I had time. It feels so lovely. So blessedly wonderful. So divine.

MA1 taught us in Boot Camp that your body always has more resources than your brain knows about, so, all you have to do to get through a particularly tough or long workout is to take your brain offline - your body knows how to run without supervision. A four-hour workout is only hard if you focus on the fact that you've been doing it for four hours (or if you're running/swimming. Those actually DO eat up a lot of your body's resources, apparently. You can do it, but then you'll be shot for about the next three days, and we don't have time for that in the military.)

So, yes. I will be moving into the gym now.