It's not the heat, it's just unfair! We're told that we're allowed one drink at lunch, but really.... sometimes I need a whole lot more than that to do this for another four hours!

They still have nice drinking lunches in London! But it's a gazillion degrees there now, too...

I can't drink at lunch because then I would end up with "keyboard face"! Yes, I am a lightweight.

Aaaah, Sisterfriend, I hear you (about the martinis AND the weather)!

Only good news is that when I do get around to doing laundry ('cause it is WAY too hot to shop), my clothes are dry on the clothesline in about 10 minutes. No joke. Beats turning on the dryer in this heat.

Liquid lunches lead to creative accounting for me, so I have to keep those to a minimum. Hope you find out where they went!

Stay cool!

Ha! I imbibed with a 1.5 martini lunch every two weeks for the tension.

And the wild sex thing for the parents and not our generation? Dude! How rude.

Head north! you are welcome here. It's about 59F.....and those lunches....that would be great.

i'm not going to complain that it's 86 degrees here. i'm just going to have a martini

Come to London and I'll buy you a martini!

I would love a liquid lunch but like Dana, it would lead to a variation of "creative accounting" for me too and my employer, although supportive of one's need to drink at times, would frown upon it. So, I have those days where I feel compelled to drink my dinner instead.

I also work at a university and we get discounts for extension courses that pertain to our jobs or for a promotion. I have always felt that wine tasting should qualify since they sometimes drive us to drink. This heat must stop.

Too hot to shop - say it aint so!

It is way too f*ing hot. They say Southern Girls are dewey. Ha - we are not dewey - we are melting! Now someone run and fetch me a mint julep.

Hee! I'm so so so so so lucky to work for the company that I work for. My supervisor (LOVE her!) has been heard telling a certain stressed out employee to "go drink a margarita as big as your head and THEN come back and deal with the situation". We also have regularly scheduled margarita Fridays - granted they take place after work (usually) but work has been known to end around 2 if the need for a margarita is particularly strong.
The heat sucks. A lot. And it's actually been better here the past couple of days, but last week was horrid. Still - waiting on the fall.

I blame my parents generation for why we CAN'T have those liberated, carefree days. They were the ones that ruined it with women's lib (I like it when man holds a door open for me or pulls out my chair in a restaurant) and std's. If it weren't for them we would all be having fun. ;)

Malibu is slightly cooler - take a day off, meet at Zuma Station 10, I'll bring an extra boogie board and the wine coolers and we can pretend we are 16 again!

Hmm... 4am laundry sounds like a good plan to me!

I will have a drink at lunch today in your honor. Maybe two.

(I'm a new reader by the way. Love your words!!)

See... THIS is why I work for myself! When I'm sick of sitting at the computer, I toddle off for lunch at one of 4 places. Sit down with a good book, a light lunch, and a glass of wine.

Mmmmmmmm.

Then go back to work all nice and relaxed. That's the way to do it :D

I think the problem is, much like when I was a bartender and the Big Boss took away "drinking at work" privileges... there's always someone in the bunch that doesn't know their limits and can't hold it together. So they ruin it for everyone else.

Damn lushes.

I thought about you this morning when I saw the news proclaiming 4 dead in LA and it reaching 114 degrees in the Valley. Holy Crap!
It's in the 90's here and that is plenty hot for us Minnesotans, don't ya know....

I'm praying for a cold front.

I've often wondered what would happen if at the next business lunch I ordered, oh say, a very girly glass of white wine. Hmm? Would they really fire moi over a wee bit of vino?

And of course if it's an intense lunch, what's wrong with a little burbon?

... "ruined it with women's lib" ???

It just got a few degrees hotter here where I sit. But I'll keep my flames to myself. This entire country is hot enough right now.

What DID happen to the 3 martini lunch? Probably something to do with our litigiousness. And changing tax codes. Weren't those things write-offs in the bad old days?

The thing is, we can still have your 3 martinis. It's just that our Expense Account* won't pay for them anymore and our co-workers might call us lushes. Plus, they probably won't mix too well with our Zoloft/Paxil/Prozac. But we all do still have a choice in the matter.

* what's one o' them anyhoo?

I'm just sayin' is all.

The Europeans have this one right. If they get all liquored up at lunchtime, they've got a 2 hour siesta to snooze it off before logging back into their e-mail. Now that's Liberation for you.

Um, hate to mention it, but syphilis and gonorrhea have been around a long time.

But I like the idea of 3-martini lunches. Even 1 martini lunches.

I know what you mean about the tension... I went to this (stupid) seminar through work about relaxation exercises that you can do throughout the day (did I mention it was stupid?). I tried to get into it but everytime I relaxed too much I'd start crying. After the third time I just pretended to relax and thought about all of the drinks I like that include vodka. Hang in there. Finding that perfect degree of tense/sane is the key!

If I'm remembering right from my childhood days of mandatory Sunday School, I think in the Bible somewhere it says, "Do not ask why the former days were better than these. For it is not from wisdom that you ask this."

But frankly, I think it's a damn good question. What *did* happen to those three-martini lunches?

Let's mix up a martini and give that some thought...

Be well and stay cool.

Man, I could really go for a martini right now. I say we band together and reclaim the martini. The revolution will not be sober!

You know, if you make your martini/margarita/beer big enough, it's like a 3-drink lunch....but it's still techically only one drink.

Just a thought.

I'm all for drinking at lunch!

But I also want to comment on the picture of the ad in your sidebar of the guy wanting us to join his class action law suit. He looks so much like one of the managing partners here at the law firm I work for that it's making me crack up everytime I see this picture. And this particular managing partner is one of those "older" men who talks to your boobs instead of your face which really makes me want to run out and drink at lunch!

If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say those lunches were abolished because people kept passing out under their desks and drunkenly harrassing their secretaries, but I could just be over-romanticizing things. ;)

I think of you when I hear the weather reports, too! My life is feast or famine. My work is kept to glacial temperatures (there's an ugly sweater that's unclaimed at reception that I've decided to only get if I actually start shivering) and at home I have no AC. When we had our 90 weather two weeks ago I followed my two cats around the apartment and kept rubbing them with wet washclothes!

It was the 80's. The 80's killed everything near and dear to my heart. Gone are the days when I didn't even bother to come back from lunch and just continued on to the bar.

*Sigh*

i work in another valley in california, where it has been 100 or more every day. did i also mention i work in a restaurant? with no air conditioning in the kitchen? it has averaged about 120 in the kitchen every night for the last week, and it is truly FRIGHTENING to me that all the guys in the kitchen that are sweating out five pounds a night are heavily armed with all manner of knives and carving equipment. it's amazing that no one has been killed. tensions are running high, no one is sleeping, and people in the damn dining room keep complaining that the a/c is "too cold." it's no wonder all of us have been drunk every night less than an hour after work.

Why are the washer and dryer in the garage? Is that normal in LA?

I'm glad to hear that you're not being affected by the rolling blackouts. Everytime I hear about them I worry about you and the cats.

I don’t much care for martinis (green olives are gross!) but I’ll take a few mojitos with lunch. Sorry about the Valley, it’s not much better on the other side of the hill these days.

Don't go all snakes on a plane!

And pass me a margarita, it's hot and sweaty here in VA!

On a hot day I prefer Margarita's! Or an ICE cold beer!
Cheers!

When I heard about the heat wave in California on the news, I thought of you - does that make me a stalker or just plain sad? Hope you get your ice cold adult beverage this evening and that you to bed early...

I've been force to go commando at home. It's not a big difference I guess, but it keeps you-know-what cool.

it was so hot in my apartment the other day, i was knitting completely naked. is that disgusting? that's disgusting huh?

I'm suffering right here in the central valley with ya gf. It's our 10th day of over 105 degrees and gonna be 113 today! The power went out last night...thank God for the blow-up pool in the backyard!

Never did care much for martinis..thought they tasted like weed-killer or something. Now I cant drink at all, makes me fall asleep.

IIF in Fresno

The one time I ordered a margarita at lunch ON A WORKDAY (because yes the day was already that bad), the owner of the company I work for walked into the very same restaurant as I was taking my first sip.

My washer and dryer are also in the garage and I was doing laundry at an unGodly hour this morning too. (Yes, w & d in garage is the norm in SoCal - keeps the water from getting everywhere in the house when the pipes explode from the HEAT!) It was 98 at 10 pm last night. I'm not going outside until November.

Oh man, I was in LA this past weekend . . . there was no air conditioning at my cousin's wedding on Saturday. And no air conditioning at the reception. Hoo-boy. You know those pretty floaty dresses? The ones made of polyester, with a knitted polyester liner to keep things modest? Yep, that's what I was wearing. Um, with a longline bra underneath to keep the rest of me in place. Can you say sweltering?

I have a solution for your laundry situation, though. Wash your clothes in cold water in the bath tub--that way, you get to plunge your arms into cold soapy water to cool off. Rinse them in cold water, then hang them in the yard to dry. Cool down by washing stuff, dry off by hanging stuff up. Save energy AND keep cooler.

I keep my washer/dryer in the basement, which is stinky, but really nice and cool in the summer. Makes laundry a little less onerous.

Helen

I feel for ya!

I find it funny-interesting that in Cali they have "cooling stations" for folks with no A/C or electricity. I had never heard of such a thing until I saw it on the news this AM.

Maybe they should open one strictly for doing laundry?

I think what has irritated me more than anything is the way it gets hotter and hotter the closer you get to 6 p.m. In my backwards little southern mind, I always think, "Six p.m.! Should start cooling off about then!" but here it just keeps on getting HOTTER.

Right now (2:44 p.m.) it is 97 where I live according to the innernets. But come 5 p.m.? It will be well over a hundred. How? Why? Huh?

Hi Lori in the central valley! We're living in the same oven! :)

Laurie, if it makes you feel any better, it's 112 right now where I'm at so that means by the time I leave work to go home, it'll be right around 114 or 115. Better than the 118 it was yesterday (according to my little temperature gauge.) But not much better. Why DOES it get so hot as the day wears on???

so...how IS the non-smoking going, anyway?

:)

Laurie,

It gets hotter because the heat that has baked into the ground, cement sidewalks, asphalt roads, etc. all day radiates back up. There is some scientific term for this. In the Central Valley it was 111 degrees this weekend. My horse's barn had buzzing clouds of stressed-out flies rising up from the shavings in the stalls, the horses' coats were matted with sweat...it was one nasty place.

When I worked in the corporate world, we had this vendor who would take us out to lunch for the holiday season. There would be what seemed to be an endless flow of wine. Then we would have to go back to the office. Like any work actually got done. Actually I used to have a few wine-infused lunches at that place. Sometimes I really miss it.

It's finally starting to cool off in the Bay Area. Hopefully the same will happen for you soon.

Could the end of the day heat be due to the blanket effect of the thick, colorful air?

Jennifer: You did NOT just say that about "women's lib"...oh dear. All those bras burned for nothing.

You should have just gone to work in your underwear. No laundry necessary and cooler.

Jennifer, look at it this way: without women's lib, we wouldn't have jobs from which we could escape for a three martini lunch.

Laurie, are your cats giving you the "Please, mommy, make it stop!" look that I'm getting from mine?

Ain't too hot to shop online, which is what I've been doing waaaay too much of! That, and laundry at ungodly hours, because, yeah, it's too damn hot.

Send some martinis this way please...

One glass of wine with a penicillin chaser please.......those were the days.....

a three martini lunch would have me so drunk I couln't work anymore. A one martini lunch, is more like it, or a one martini lunch with an amereto sour. 3 martini dinner , hmmm maybe.

I cannot believe that I live in hot hot hot Ohio and I am flying to hot hot hotter San Francisco tomorrow to be in my 58 year old sister's (2nd) wedding in Sacramento, and I (47 year old baby sister, with my 52 year old other sister) have to wear a raspberry chiffony poufy sleeveless dress with heels. F the nylons. Out of the frying pan into the fire, for sure. I'd like an Absolut vodka marinti on the rocks with a twist, puhlease! Maybe I'll have one for lunch every day this week since I'm off work for these glorious festivites. Oh, and women's lib had nothing to do with wrecking the 3 martini lunch. But that's another story. Cheers!

Check it out, Laurie, now you've heard from two Julies in hot hot hot Ohio. :) Instead of flying to hot San Francisco tomorrow, I shall be driving to hottish Michigan on Friday.

Am I the only one who thought Laurie was talking about, uh, a different kind of tension? Before she clarified about the martinis? Oh dear. Well anyway. It's a good thing you clarified about the martinis. :) Here's to the ladies who lunch...

Julie: IN MY DREAMS. hehehehehehe

LOL

No Julie, you're not the only one who thought that! (I'm a dirty, dirty girl!)

And to the other Julie in OH...Sacramento is even hotter than San Francisco, so do not let her talk you into nylons!

It's so sad here (in the office) cooled down to a frosty temperature, that I'm actually in my jacket!! One step outside and it's instant sweat. That can NOT be good for your health.

Now I'm jealous of Tami because she is obviously in an office with AC. Yes, it has cooled down some (Supposedly it is 79) but I am currently working on the fifth floor of a building that has no AC. I'm dying, I tell you.

The three-martini lunch went the way of the lunch HOUR. Corporate big whigs decided that you don't need a whole 60 minutes to eat your lunch and cut most back to 30-45 minutes. Well, hells bells, you can't get a decent fade on in 30 minutes. Way to suck the life out of lunch.

It does seem like our parents' generation had it better, but I wouldn't want to go backward. I think it's probably a case of "the grass is always greener..." syndrome.

Amen sister! Bring back the 3 martini lunch!

The Husband always says, "Yes, those were the good old days. If you were a white Protestant male in a white-collar profession. For the rest of us, it was be quiet and sit down."
My darling mother, on the other hand, had her little drinkee-poos. Which, oddly enough, I posted about last night. Could it be that we think about booze all at the same time (or should that be "all the time")?

Speaking of SNAKES ON A PLANE...did you see Trent's blog today? With Samuel Jackson. Crack me up.

And we were just talking about making an 'iced coffee run' today at work and by coffee we meant 'iced beer'.

april - it wasn't the 80's - that decade ruined the 3 line lunches - with no lunch on the side!!! It was the 60's that ruined the liquid lunch - too much liquid, not enough keeping the hands off.

And it definitely wasn't feminism that ruined the martini lunch. We could use a "stiff one" having to deal with the old boy's club - besides, every female boss I've had has kept a bottle of something refreshing in her bottom drawer.

HA!!!! HA!!! HA!!! For once I have some advantage over you young dewy things!!!! BWAHAHAHAHA!!!! I am almost 57, was at the forefront of the sexual liberation, women's liberation, alcohol drinking, no seat belts, no helmet motorcycle riding, preHIV days.(Never did drugs, though. I was crazy enough already.)

And it was not feminism that did away with all the drinking, etc. I think it's the uptight, hipocritical, new right, good ole boys. BWAHAHAHAHHA!!!!

HA!!!! HA!!! HA!!! For once I have some advantage over you young dewy things!!!! BWAHAHAHAHA!!!! I am almost 57, was at the forefront of the sexual liberation, women's liberation, alcohol drinking, no seat belts, no helmet motorcycle riding, preHIV days.(Never did drugs, though. I was crazy enough already.)

And it was not feminism that did away with all the drinking, etc. I think it's the uptight, hipocritical, new right, good ole boys. BWAHAHAHAHHA!!!!

LAURIE! Did you see Trent's blog?? Oh mylanta! SNAKES ON A PLANE!

Sounds like you are all going 'troppo', is when people go mad from too many hot days (it actually happens). People in Australia go troppo from time to time because we have this kind of weather and most people don't own airconditioners.
Take care and remember 'It is never too hot to shop". Repeat it again "It is never too hot to shop".
Keep cool
Mia

**waves back to neighbor Kim somewhere in the central valley**

111 degress at 7pm ...SNAKES ON A PLANE!

No shit! And if I knew that it would be so damn hard to get pregnant and stay pregnant I wouldn't have held on to my Catholic virginity for so long. (Tom this was totally your loss)Plus I'm in corporate sales where I'm supposed to be enjoying the martini lunch but the martini lunch is the diet cola with lime lunch now!!!! I'm so born too late.

"look at you with crazy eyes and want to eat your head."

I think I shot that look to a clerk at Walgreens yesterday. I know that eating his head would have been an option. Although my first thought was just going over the counter after him and using some kind of killer death grip that I really don't know how to do.

Heat makes you crazy. What can I say?
Off to drink more beer.

Can you hear the ice rattling in my big silver shaker? Honey, we even have ice in the HOT tub! They are cold and oh so sipable here at my house. I have a sign on my deck that I turn on when I have a pitcher of "tini's" ready to go and the neighbors come a runnin'! What's your flavor and I will have one waiting! Have you tried Oprah's Lemon Drop? Oh, it is to die for - especially on a hot day!

Yes, but did they have Mojitos?

And have you had the pleasure of a beer-marguerita? (Don't knock them 'til you've tried them - they're awesome). If you haven't tried one, run, don't walk to the nearest liquor store and buy some tequila, some Coronas, pull that limeade concentrate and some ice out of the freezer and fire up the blender.

And of course up here in the frozen north we are all coool cal iforna, cool moive star,summer forever land.Nuts and berries, frozen yougurt, bladeing by the beach.But you all are just cooking.Goodness, we do the gin and tonic.The tonic, it helps with the scurrvy,don't want to get the scurrvy.If your getting cabin fever (house bound), I have found making differnt flavour ice cubes help kill about 20 mintues. Keep cool and wear big sun glasses. denny in toronto.

A three martini lunch, huh?
I'd be a slobbering mess falling all over the end of the bar. I'd probably still be trying to be all funny and cute. Even though I'm not really all that funny. Or cute.
Sucks about the heat.
Hope things cool off soon so you can be more comfortable.

A new kind of insanity. My friend (clearly insane, just had her 3rd kid) talked me into going to Bikram yoga classes with her last week. Cuz it's cheap ($10 for 10 days!). Since I'm insane too I said yes. And yes, we live in California (Bay area).

For the uninitiated, you do strenuous yoga poses in a teeny room heated to 117 degrees with 20 very sweaty people - for 90 minutes. Weird thing is, after it was over and I walked out into a 90 degree evening, I got goosebumps. Kinda chilly.

Look what my free-wheeling parents have turned me into. sob. I think I'd much rather have free sex and drugs and booze.
namaste.

Maybe we should go with Al Gore's explanation -- global warming is to blame, for all of it. I'm not happy when I'm hot, so imagine what a planet of people who are too hot are going to feel like. Hope it cools off for you out there soon!

Oh yes those were the fun days LOL! But for now I save my martini's for after work. I'm such a lightweight now (cheap date?)

Last night it was watermelon martini's for me - yummy.

A three martini lunch would make the rest of the day so much better.

By the way, I saw this and thought of you: http://www.shopintuition.com/product.asp?pid=13673&a=w

People, people, PEOPLE!

Let's get some perspective here.

Nothing beats the deep south in late August/September when you walk out of a nice air-conditioned building into what can be loosely described as invisible soup. Sucking the life force STRAIGHT out of your body fast enough you can feel it being ripped from your soul. You can see the slump, the hair, the clothes, the body.

Now THAT'S heat for ya.

Martinis...mmmm...

And I hear you on the heat. Last night was the first night in a week and a half that I got more than two hours sleep combined. It was a dream come true... and I have been avoiding doing laundry too. I'm down to my last few clean pairs of undies and my last pair of capris. You have inspired me to try to get one load done at some point today! :)

You should move to a more temperate area of L.A. like Koreatown or Santa Monica. And also get a roommate because although sometimes you refer to yourself as a hermit or shut-in - you aren't. You're more of a people person. Get a roommate to tie you over, until you find yourself in a relationship again or move into a communal household of young professionals.

OMG - that snakes on a plane necklace (link in Kristin's post above) is $350... Um, I don't think so...

I have no problem having a little adult beverage during lunch. Honestly, if someone is willing to give me booze at noon, who am I to say no? Malibu and pineapple juice? Bottoms up!

Careful! the booze+the heat=drunk faster than you can say blueberry pancakes!

The Daily Show was all about Snakes on a Plan on Monday!

I'm in the middle of the TX Bar exam: it is so hard to keep myself from working Snakes on a Plane into an answer.

I've never had a martini. But I'd be willing to try in the name of sociological experimentation.

I don't know how I found your blog; it probably had something to do with trying to find the best pink & white acrylic layer in Austin, TX. I'm glad I found you, though. Knitting, nails, and cat beds? All of this from someone under 50? I'm reading this religously from now on.

And, I can say that I was in Sacramento on Sunday and it really is EXCRUCIATING out there. This is coming from a girl who lives in TEXAS, where it is obscenely hot a good time of the year. Hang in there.

I am looking forward to the day, sometime this fall, when I can wear my hair in some sort of actual style. Not in the "get it the heck off my neck" style that it has been in all summer. We (southern Nevada) are used to this sort of heat that the valleys of CA are experiencing this year, but still I am sick of it.

Oh, and are you saying that it isn't cool to drink 3 martinis for lunch anymore? Boy, I'm going to have to get with the program. ;-)

weeeee! on vacation in Portland, Oregon. Left the 105 of Idaho and am freewheeling it here at 85 degrees! That's sad when I think 85 is cool!! The dregs of summer really suck!

As a teacher I frequently think that they should have an adult beverage section in the lunch room, but people tend to frown on the idea... those people are not teachers! At least when I'm melting, I'm not working.

They have "Cooling Stations" in other cities, too. They had them in Chicago when I lived there in the summers of 1999 and 2000. The public libraries were among the official Stations. In L.A., I think they're the Senior Centers.

Also, I would really enjoy a cold bottle of hard cider, but I can't have one. And I haven't found a decent one in L.A. in four years, anyway.

OMG! did you see the snakes on the plane!?????
http://saturdaynight.typepad.com/elsnblog/2006/07/so_how_was_your.html

Our parents obviously had key parties and 3-M lunches and smoked when they were pregnant and ate Tuna Noodle Casseroles because they didn't have Wellbutrin and Effexor and Lexapro!

Of course there's two million comments on your blog already (as usual), but I'm delurking to comment in spite of that. Ironically enough, I also did laundry early this morning at 80 degree weather before it hit the hundreds! I think maybe I should just go buy more clothes so I don't have to worry about laundry anymore (then again, I'd have to win the lotto to pay for more clothes).

you said it girl. bring on the liquid lunch. wouldn't people be so much more relaxed? like just chill dude..:)

Ahh, sun! You know Great Sobakowa and I might be related. There's a passing resemblance.

If I had gotten to your blog yesterday I would have mentioned the clothesline thing, but even yesterday I would have been beaten to it. That Lynn is so smart.

Seriously, though: go buy yourself a clothesline and some pins for about $10. Hang up a load of laundry before you go to work; it'll be all dry and sweet-smelling when you get home. You will save money and emit less GHG.

Lucia, um. I don't mean to alarm you. But I do not live in the sort of neighborhood where you can hang things outside and then come home and still find them there.

If I put my clothes on a clothesline to dry, they would be gone by noon.

For those of us who want to try making the fried chicken, but don't live in the US, what's Tony Cachere's all seasoning? Cajun? French? I expect there's no equivalent here in Canada, but at least maybe I can find an acceptable substitute. Thanks, Laurie! Drool!