October in San Francisco has brought along the typical few days of hot weather (hot for this region, anyways), even though it’s autumn. This brings a unique problem to someone like me who lives in a studio (read: very small). When the temperature is high, I cannot cook at night. The room (singular!) is warm enough already; cooking a hot meal adds heat to it, delaying the natural night cool down. The slower the room cools down, the more difficult it is to fall asleep.
A cascade of negative consequences, that’s what it is. Good news is, I live right by a mall with plenty of food options. So on the hot days these past few weeks, take-out dinner was the only sensible option. Not that I need any extra excuse to not cook. The downside of course is the hit to the wallet. Inflation is still high, food prices are still ridiculous. Can you even eat a non-fast food meal for less than $20 these days?
In addition to not cooking when the weather is hot, I also do not use my LG OLED TV. Did you know that OLED televisions consume more power than the equivalent LED unit? All that wattage has to go somewhere: radiating right into the room. So what do I do for entertainment on a hot October San Francisco evening? I use the iPad. That thing runs so cooly that it doesn’t even have an internal fan. Indeed it’s kind of slumming it to go from a 65-inch screen to a 10-inch screen, but I must avoid heating up the room unnecessarily.
Because as mentioned: sleep is utmost importance. The body needs to cool down 1 to 2 degrees in order for the person to fall asleep. The warmer the room, the more challenging it is to get there. What would be ace is one of those mattress toppers that has active cooling. If climate change gets worse, and San Francisco sees more and more hot weather days, it’s something worth considering.
You can go to Chinatown for a meal under $20.