Re: How do you do it in the south???
There's good reason why folks who can, snowbird. Fly South in Winter, North in Summer. My own and my Wife's physical conditions make this more than a luxury, and our situation makes it a serious challenge which as yet to produce anything even nearing perfection.
We tried doing the extended Winter vacation bit in Orlando, and while it was idyllic in terms of conditions, it was also bordering on toxic in human terms. I cannot foresee its repetition in my lifetime.
Up here, Summers are relatively tolerable, although the last couple of weeks we've been, by stages, forced to hole up in our one room that's got A/C, and then upgrade that A/C. It's tolerable, but it also incubates a particularly insidious form of cabin fever. I end up drinking too much, and that's just one of the problems.
When I was younger, I was treated to real heat in 'Nam. 100+ degrees and tropical humidity, week after week. I began to appreciate the term 'siesta'; in between moments of fierce, terrifying, frenetic activity not normally associated with civilized existence. I'll say I coped. I doubt there was anything better'n that at my pay grade.
People like to characterize Southerners in ways that only serve to confirm the speaker's own ignorance. I can understand who they are and why. But I could never cope with their lives in any realistic way. Not as a life sentence.
Greg