12:09 pm | 06 October 2003 | intemperate climates

Those of you who know me in the flesh (not that way you sickos) will also know that I have a lot of difficulty regulating my personal temperature, to the point where I identified with my brother's childhood pet lizards and their need to drag themselves to the heat rock in order to digest. Unstrangely, I hate extremes of temperature (and this is just another reason, my friends, WHY I MUST LEAVE THIS CITY).

To wit: Boldly flouting the "average" human temperature of 98.6�F, I hover somewhere around 97� even, which may not seem like that big a difference, but which is, since even reaching 99� is a hideous fever. Additionally, i tend towards being clammy in even (cough) personal situations, which can only add to my graveyard �lan (my skin-tone is what the word corpselike was invented for; add to that the what-i-am-told-is "repulsing" sensation of one gelid, subarctic leg flung over yours during sleep in a primitive heat-seeking fashion, and, well, it's a wonder i attract anybody other than necrophiliacs). It's getting cold here now, and it shouldn't come as much of a shocker that I'm having trouble getting up in the mornings. Once safely ensconced in four down comforters, with the big hairy water bottle that is my German shepherd tucked behind my legs, it's difficult to emerge from my cocoon*.

Summer's even better because, though I remain chilly, I don't sweat much at all (or particularly well, when i do), so though my skin is outwardly chilly I am gently broasting on an internal spit, and tend towards getting heat-stroke and collapsing at inopportune moments. Add a general neurotic disposition (and, via this, a habit of shrieking "I will go insane if you so much as touch me in this heat!") and, well, I'm not much of a picnic to be around if it's not spring or fall. Which, by the way, it is supposed to be right now, BUT IS NOT. No. It's fifty degrees out, maybe, and the leaves show no signs of lovely anthocyanidal action (changing colour); no, instead there's a sanitation dept. strike, so the trash piles up, and i wander the house in layers of bad pajama pants and a fur hat, looking for my komrades. clm.

*This is possibly the only time I will ever make a reference that could be extended to some kind of crap analogy likening me and/or my developmental process to that of larva-to-butterfly or some other similarly hokey clich�d crizzap. UGH.