Living in Las Vegas: Observation #2:

"Sunshine on my shoulder makes me smile"...unless it's burning a hole straight through my shirt and leaving an aching sunburn in under 30 seconds like it does here in Vegas.  For some reason everyone wants to wear their ability to withstand baking temperatures like a badge of honor and discuss this superpower openly on FB.

Everyone, of course, thinks wherever they live is hotter and more intolerable than everywhere else, but the same can be said for people living in cold weather climates and we dealt with this in Chicagoland.  There comes a point when it just doesn't matter.  Hot is hot and cold is cold.  Aren't there more important things to worry about like who will make the most profit on Storage Wars (Dave seems to be losing his moxy)?

I will say that I have lived in South Alabama and Hong Kong and now Las Vegas and was forced to go house/apt hunting and inevitably move into said house/apt during the hottest month of the year in all of those extremely hot locations.  Therefore, I "feel" like I can talk objectively about the differences and give everyone credit where credit is due.

I'll have to say that it was hilarious watching the Hong Kongers pull out their North Face jackets when the temperature dipped below 70 degrees (Alabamians do the same thing) but it was equally side-splitting listening to the Chicago locals moan on and on about the heat when, to me, it never really warmed up there.  Honestly, I will take the heat over the cold any day of the week but I have Reynaud's syndrome and I actually ended up with frostbite on my toe while we lived in Chicago. The winters in Chicagoland are nothing to take lightly and those people know how to handle the cold weather and blizzards like no other place I've been.   But I hate the cold.  Hate it , hate it, hate it!!!

I love hot weather.  I love cooling off in the pool and I love not having a real winter but this may be because that's the kind of environment I was raised in.  Stick with what you know, right?  I love the heat, up to a point, but it's the humidity that I find intolerable.  My make-up evaporates in the blink of an eye, my clothes get drenched in uncomfortable sweat and my hair sticks to my neck even if I have it pulled up causing whelps and rashes all over my head.  High humidity is absolutely miserable. Before the Alabama/HK folks rejoice in victory, though, I have to add that the dry air is just as brutal in different ways. Las Vegas actually has some humidity sometimes and I use the word "some" loosely.  Just like Chicago folks don't know what hot is and Alabamians/Hong Kongers don't know what cold is, Vegas locals don't know what humidity is.

They think it's funny that I have humidifiers running at all times in my house but without them my entire body dries out from the inside out, I get headaches and nosebleeds and my lungs hurt. I feel like I can't breathe and I feel like I can't get enough water.  I can actually feel the water being stolen from my lungs by the desert heat and it's painful. I need moisture in my body desperately and the humidifiers make me feel healthy and comfortable.

In the sun, Vegas is much hotter than Alabama and the sun is deadly and will cause a sunburn in minutes.  But because the humidity is so low, any shade can bring a 20 degree temperature drop making it very comfortable and enjoyable to be outside. I actually had the windows tinted in my car AND my house, yes my house, to block out that potent desert sun.  I have never felt the need to do that anywhere else I've lived. Night time, when the sun goes down and a light breeze blows, is very pleasant here in LV and has become my favorite time of the day.

In Alabama and HK, the morning was my favorite time of the day.  It's really the only time that it was ever cool there and I made the most of my mornings by running along the Repulse Bay promenade to Deep Water Bay.  I miss that.  So, in my opinion, nowhere is perfect.  It's just important to find things that will make you more comfortable where ever you're living and to share those ideas with others so they can be comfortable, too.  And after living in HK and rarely seeing the sun because the pollution was so thick, I love seeing the bright sunshine again.  Sunshine really does make me smile, but only while I'm wearing SPF 100 and my Maui Jim sunglasses.  Smile.  : )