Communal living in Estonia

When I got home yesterday, the heat index was 113 degrees. We actually watched Planet Earth's (excellent) documentary on ice just to cool down.

We live in a lovely 100-year-old house on a hill. We're luckier than a lot of northeastern folk because we have central AC, but only sort of. The thermostat was on 65 when I got home (I know, and I don't want to talk about it or the environment or power shortages or how expensive our electric bill will be).

With the AC on, the downstairs is tolerable (although "cool" would be an unfair word for what it is.) Upstairs, which happens to be where my bedroom is, it's at least 100 degrees. You can see the heat waves move through the air. Even at 10 pm last night, it was disgustingly, stiflingly hot. I moved my bed so that it's in the center of the room, directly in between my fan and the air vent, and it did some good, but not much.

This heat wave makes me miss everything about Texas summers. I miss the dry heat in Austin, I miss air conditioning that works and houses that are insulated, I miss driving to work instead of riding the metro (note to DC commuters: in the height of the summer, if you're going to be riding the metro with 300 other people, please shower and use deodorant every day.) I miss badass thunderstorms and lightening storms(like everything else about Maryland, our "storms" are totally lame). Although Texas is better than Maryland in just about every way, it is still 95 degrees. So I have a new plan.

When I hate things, I daydream about Estonia, my favorite place on earth. Right now in Tallinn, it's in the 70s and sunny. And they're going to get a little bit of rain over the next week, but it won't be bad. For $824, a one-way ticket to Tallinn that leaves DC tomorrow at 2:35 pm could be mine.

I won't lie, I might get on that plane tomorrow. One of the many amazing things about Tallinn is that the entire city has free wireless, so even when I'm starving and homeless and broke because of my $824 plane ticket and lack of a job, I can at least blog about it. I figure that with Smed in Argentina, tri-continental blogging might be good for our stats, too.

Great idea, you say? Why aren't I invited, you say? Well, my friend, read on!

To expedite things, I took the liberty of looking up tickets for everyone that I know of who reads the blog and isn't in DC. Folks in Austin and Dallas, your best bet is to drive to Houston and fly out with our friends that live there. Your flight is $848, and leaves at 12:26 from Intercontinental. Smed, I know you just got to Argentina, but in case you're bored already, tickets are $1459, which you could totally swing. The New Yorkers get the best price- only $751! Tickets out of Boston are $953, and from Lexington are the most expensive, coming in at $1559. I figure that, for just shy of $10,000, we can get everyone we like to Tallinn within the next 48 hours.