Sweet Georgia Brown, it’s been hot around here. Saturday, temperatures in Noe Valley got up to 102º, I’m told, and I certainly believe it. We live in a top-floor unit with a tar roof and windows to the east and west, so there was just no help in sight. We watched the temperature on our thermostat rise through the 80s and 90s until … oops! It only goes to 94º. Everything above that was just "OL" for overload. We were in OL for roughly 6 hours, and I don’t doubt for a moment that we broke the 100 mark, perhaps by quite a lot. Sitting in front of our lone fan in the kitchen was no help, as all it did was blast searing hot air into our faces.

We survived, but there were casualties. At one point I entered the kitchen and noticed that wine was leaking from two of the bottles on our rack. The heat had caused the wine to expand, putting pressure on the corks. The bottles that were obviously affected were not ones I particularly cared about, but I hope some of the bottom-rack stuff didn’t get too cooked. We immediately shuttled most of it to the basement, and stuck some in the fridge for safe keeping. Guess it’s time to invest in a wine cellar.