August Sucks!!

So, I've been told by a certain co-worker that I am the cheeriest person she knows. I, and many of my friends, would probabably have to disagree with that assessment. So, lest she continue in this fantasy land where I am a nice guy, I have decided to make an entry about some of my complaints.
First off, August in the DC Metro area blows. Actually it doesn't, the air has seemed to stand pretty still in all of it's muggy nastiness. Today for example, it is only 8:30 am and it is 82 degrees. Now, that may not seem bad. 82 is generally a nice temperature, however when it's en route to 98 degrees for the high, that is not fun. Combine that with the fact that it is foggy, yes foggy in August. How does that work? I have no clue. Where I come from, it's foggy when it's cold like in January. All that this does is makes it so that you are walking through a sticky, nasty cloud while it's 80 degrees.
This past weekend was miserable--temperature-wise. It was about 100 degrees and muggy as could be. I have a tendency to sweat in this humidity too. This does not make for much fun in these conditions. On Saturday afternoon, I helped some guys move some furniture, which was really a nightmare. We had to go to one of the guy's parents' house and get two couches and a big-screen TV, drive in the U-haul that had no AC and then move the stuff up three floors. By the time we were through I was soaked. Disgusting, I know, but seriously, I don't even sweat that much when I run for a half-hour. Anyway, I guess I was giving meaningful service and I am fulfilled--that's what they tell me at church at least. I don't know where I am going with this rant, but suffice it to say that I am not a fan of the heat out here right now.
So, another thing I hate about this time of year is the METRO. Not that I am a big fan of it for most of the year, but now the general mediocre service provided by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority has gotten even worse. It's awful. For the past three weeks, every train is packed, the airconditioning on said packed trains is sporadic at best, and they have the gaul to charge me extra fare for riding at peak hours when riding at that time is miserable.
Yesterday I had about had it with the METRO. In the morning, I had my least-favorite train driver. It's this woman who puts on this fake, ethereal, pseudo-sophisticated voice. She tries to over-enunciate every sylable that she speaks, and she will say (in the aforementioned voice) something like this "The next (pause) station, East (pause) Falls Church. (Long pause) Doors opening (another long pause) ontheleft. Seriously, she pisses me off every time I ride on her train. I think they need to move her to another line because I don't need to deal with that in the morning. She's obnoxious, and it's a good thing that I ride in the middle of the train, far from her, cause if I were in the car she was, I would probably tap on her window, open it up, and yell at her for sounding like an idiot--she drives a train for crying out loud, she doesn't need to sound pretentious. So that was the morning. On the way home, I got to the station and they said that I would have to wait for 10 minutes for the next train in my direction. And when It showed up, it was so packed that I couldn't get in. The next one came, and I got in, but so did the most uncouth, ill-mannered group of Euro-trash imaginable. There was a group of about 10-15 teenaged girls from Britain, and they were loud and obnoxious. They had to squeal every time that the driver braked quickly. The broke into song at times (John Denver of all people too), and were completely aware that they were angering many of their fellow riders. I could go on for an hour or so about how I wanted to tell them off (but I wanted to be better behaved than them, so I didn't), or about how relieved I was to finally get off the train, knowing full-well that I would never see them, but I won't. Know this, that experience didn't help me to have any more fond feelings towards METRO.
The one highlight of the heat and WMATA is that when the air is nasty like it is today, bus rides (at least in Northern Virginia) are free. Good thing, cause there was no way I was going to walk a mile in this soupy mess outside to get to the METRO. So, I boarded the bus this morning, happy to see that the little red bag was covering the meter saying that I got a free ride. Then I paid my normal tribute to Rosa Parks by being a white man and walking to the back of the bus for a seat (I really do think of her when I walk back there, which I do every time that I ride the bus).
I guess the good thing about the heat is that it makes me appreciate the fact that I have pool at my apartment (which was fantastic on Saturday). So, in my humble opinion, the August heat is miserable, however, the worst of it lasts only about a month. The METRO is horrible, but it's cheaper than parking and has been pretty handy considering I didn't have a car for a year here. And though the soupy air is nasty, it's very nice to ride the bus for free.