There’s a secret to beating the heat in Phoenix (shhh)

From July 18, 2006:

Here’s an important tip for keeping your house cool and comfortable during our torrid summers.

Actually, you may want to clip this out and save it. I’ll wait while you go find the scissors.

Ready? Here goes.

Make sure the air-conditioner works. Got that?

This is important because if your airconditioning stops working, your house will become warm. Very warm, indeed. And you will find yourself at 5 a.m. standing in a pool of sweat peering at the inner workings of your thermostat with a magnifying glass and trying to decipher the owners manual and taking the *&%!&@ thing apart and fiddling with it, and finally you will be rewarded with the hum of AC kicking in again, but it will take forever for the house to cool off because your air-conditioner is a &($@! piece of junk, but what are you going to do because you can’t afford a new one.

Trust me. I know about these things. Now let’s get down to business.

That’s a tough one. I’m not sure you can have it both ways year-round.

What about Prescott? That’s a nice town. The summers are nice, and while you’d have to put up with some winter weather, it wouldn’t be too bad.

Fort Collins, Colo., always rates high in those surveys. A little winter won’t kill you. Think of it as bracing.

I think Santa Fe has pretty decent weather. I’m told the summers are mostly in the 80s. There is some winter there, too, and they have good Mexican food and the opera.

Of course, we have good Mexican food and an opera here.

You could live here eight months of the year and in Santa Fe for the summer. That’s what I’d do if I had money. That and buy a new air-conditioner.