Sunshine

Now, I love humidity a lot more than the next girl. This has a lot to do with an unpleasant experience during an arid Utah summer (I don't care what anyone says 97 degrees is hot, with or without humidity), as well as an unpleasant side effect of cold, dry weather, made worse by forced hot air heating (nosebleeds). I would just like to point out right now that if you happen to have issues with winter nosebleeds, get a humidifier. It saved my life - when I first went to college (also my first experience with forced hot air heat for an extended period of time), I got a nosebleed almost every other day for the entire month of January. During my sophomore year, I got a humidifier, and it definitely helped. I'm not saying they stopped completely, but it was more like once every two weeks or so, which is a huge improvement. Anyway, that's the main reason that I love humidity.

However, preventing nosebleeds is not the purpose of this post - I had a revelation as I walked to work: even though Raleigh supposedly has over 200 sunny days per year, they must not occur during the month of June. I guess it's the humidity, because we've had a little sun here and there (and a beautiful cool, clear day on Sunday), but basically, it's been threatening thunderstorms every day for the last 2 weeks, and so humid you can see the water in the air. I guess that's what happens when you combine high humidity with much higher temperatures than I've experienced. So, while Raleigh is sunny and beautiful in the winter (unlike a certain state I've experienced in January - and it's not VT), it appears that summer might be a little more unpleasant than I'd hoped.

All this goes to say that I guess there are good things and bad things about every state (although I can't think of too many good things to say about a few states - take North Dakota for exammple: their water tastes bad because they have a lot of odd little minerals getting into it, they certainly don't call them the badlands for nothing - yes, I know the national park is in SD, but they have them in ND, as well, it's just called Theodore Roosevelt National Park, it's hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter, and I'm pretty sure I'm allergic to it - but that's another story). So maybe it's time to open my mind a little bit. Of course, I won't be talking like this when it's 75 degrees in November :) Oh yeah and I haven't had a "real" nosebleed since I moved here. Now that's what I call paradise :)