Don't get me wrong - I'm not ranking on my home state. It's a very nice state - emphasis on the "nice". Most of my relatives are still there, the people are friendly, the food is incredible, the air is lovely (if a little thin - once you get used to living at 50 feet above sea level, 7,000 feet is a little hard to take.) But I never really quite fit in - as I often say, I'm the neon-purple sheep of the family. It's not that I'm the black sheep, shunned and banned by the rest. No, I'm the one that they just kind of look at out of the side of their eyes (and every once in a while one of them will sidle up and ask me where I buy my hair dye.)
Mostly though, the state itself has let me know in various subtle ways that I'm really not their kind of people. There's the air thing, for example. Then there's the heat. I was born in Washington, Utah - just south of St. George. For you non-Utahns, think Vegas without the lights, the booze or the strippers. Lovely in the wintertime, but God-awful in the summer. I'm talking 115 in the shade kind of God-awful. I remember riding Grandpa's motorcycle down to the fields one day - it was so hot that the breeze wouldn't cool you, because it was hotter than the sweat it was trying to evaporate. I, on the other hand, am a) one shade beyond phosphorescent and tend to burst into flame after 15 minutes in the sun, and b) get heat headaches to the point where it feels like my brain is expanding outside my skull every time the temp gets up over 90. So not built for that kind of weather...
Normally, it's ok - my adopted home of Oregon treats me well, with 222 cloudy days a year. But every once in a while... like this weekend, we're talking up over 100, and not a cloud in sight. So... I guess what I'm saying here, Oregon, is that you can ask Utah. I'm a fickle bitch. Don't make me move to Alaska.
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