by Steve Sakiyama –
I lost my big fat green wallet. Thankfully, a kind person found it in the pocket of a jacket that I tried on earlier in the day. I must have stuffed it in there during my fitting, then promptly forgot about it. The jacket was too small so everything (jacket, wallet, my mind) went back on the rack and I left. Sigh.
It’s amazing how we lose things. Once I found my long lost set of keys in the bushes beside our house, all rusted and caked with dirt. How did they get there? Did they run off together one dark and stormy night only to get lost in the shrubbery? This reminds me of the odd Mother Goose nursery rhyme where the “dish ran away with the spoon.” Where did they go? To a china cabinet in Mexico where they lived happily ever after?
Based on my extensive research that relies entirely on snippets of hearsay, the next time you lose something check the fridge. Many have lost their wallets, keys and phones only to find them in there chilling out with the rutabagas. A friend told me he found his long lost TV remote control shivering in the freezer. Did he want a cold and frosty remote control to enjoy on a hot summer’s day? It’s ironic – often I can’t find what I want in the fridge yet lost items show up there in all their glory. Some things in this universe are just destined to disappear – forever gone like the one sock that gets lost in the laundry. There must be a massive secret warehouse in Area 51 that stores all that was ever lost, like unmatched socks and the City of Atlantis, just waiting to be discovered in an X-Files episode.
Speaking of losing things, while enjoying your cold remote control outside on a hot summer’s day, your body loses its extra heat by the evaporation of perspiration. Sweat is mostly liquid water molecules moving around at different speeds all energized by the heat in the sweat itself. Evaporation occurs when a liquid turns to gas; that is, when the fastest molecules break free of the surface and escape into the air. These escapees take heat with them so the remaining sweat cools, allowing the body to regulate its temperature and cool down. In the natural environment, evaporation of liquid water is a critical process involved in both the earth’s water cycle and energy balance. We can’t see it happening but you can feel its cooling effects when you perspire.
With all this talk about heating and cooling, what kind of weather will June bring? For the South Island the outlook for temperature and precipitation is biased toward cooler and wetter than normal conditions. So summer may get off to a slow start, but let’s see what unfolds.
No matter what the weather, whenever we end up lost under the stifling noise of our busy lives just look up to the beautiful sky. The reflection of sunlight playing across clouds drifting lazily in the vast, infinite blue gives us pause – a time to refocus and see the things in life that are important to hold on to. It’s all there, just waiting to be found.
~ Weatherwit
