Answers to this week’s questions at The Friday Five @ Livejournal

1. Do you have any big plans for the summer/winter (depending upon your hemisphere)?

Summer, and nope! I just focus is on surviving it.

2. Have you ever been or are you a fan of camping?

I LOVED camping as a child. Through my ages about 0-11 my family camped as much as we could during the summers – pretty much all weekends, and all/most of the summer vacation weeks (4) Mom and Dad had. We used my Dad’s Union’s camping area which was open to only Union members, and our tent remained up there all through the summer. Our friends would visit us there, and my two best friends would come and stay for a couple of days or a week a several times during the summer. My friends and I would have a little orange tent we’d sleep in, while Mom and Dad slept in the big tent. It was fun! The ocean was about 3-4 minutes walk away, the camping area was surrounded by woods and small hills. We’d go hiking – both just us kids and have adventures in the woods about 15 minutes to 30 minutes away in the woods, as well as all adults and kids going hiking together for whole day trips.

I haven’t been camping as an adult. I’m sure my memories of it are overly romanticized.

3. Did you ever go to a sleep-away camp in the summer when you were a kid?

No! That would’ve been my nightmare! I hated school, so many noisy kids and just crowds in general… summers were my rest from the noise and discomfort of having too many noisy kids and crowds around me all day five days a week. I needed that solitude of having only my actual friends to deal with during the summer to withstand the school months.

4. What is going to be the high point of the fast-approaching season?

Food, absolutely! New potatos, strawberries, rhubarb, ice cream, cool summer drinks… I eat so much ice cream and drink so many cool drinks, because they taste great but also to help keep coo, refreshedl and hydrated.

5. What is your favorite way to beat the heat/ be warm and toasty?

Aircon is my favorite – I love grocery shopping in the summer because food shops are the that are cool/cold in the summer.

I’d love to have aircon at home but aircon is not a thing in homes here or in most buildings. Indeed, hospitals have been having problems during summers because they don’t have cooling aircon. We didn’t used to get hot weather for long (days rather than weeks) until about 15 years ago, so most homes have to invest in standing/table fans or those pump things you mount on a wall and that can be used both for heating and cooling if you want cooling in the summer. But in the future I’m sure aircon will be included in more and more buildings in the building stage or when renovating, considering the increasingly hot and long summers.

I just have to rely running my standing fan all the time, taking cool showers as many times a day as necessary and not toweling off, and also just wetting a towel in cold water and wiping all my limbs down with that to cool off. It doesn’t beat the heat, but makes it survivable even though just barely IME.