It's Tragic, but I'm Allergic to School

It's tragic, but I'm allergic to School, this school in particular, CSUS. And why do ask? Is it because the parking spaces are repulsive or the professors reek? No. It is the dang trees. What a coincidence that I live in the city of trees, where they are highly valued and planted. I love trees, I’ll admit. They provide many beneficial qualities to the human race. They produce CO2, provide shade, and are esthetically pleasing to the eye. However, I’m allergic to its overwhelming reproductive excesses. Yes, I will say it, tree sperm. Since Sacramento is a Mediterranean climate, we have lovely dry summers and can also have winds due to, I would assume, either convectional or conversional lifting. Nevertheless, this wind blows around all the pollen including up my nostrils. My eyes are constantly watering, I sneeze up a storm walking to class, and when I let up, I am still sniffling. So when my professors and friends ask who broke my heart, I say it was the trees. So don’t mind me when I am popping Claritin pills, although I plan on switching to Sudafed. Though I notice for some reason, in the mornings or when it’s colder, my allergies aren’t bad. This would be interesting to find out.

Spare The Air

It realized today that Sacramento does have great season variability. I remember while growing up, we would have what would be called “spare the air day.” I was young and naïve then, although some may argue this hasn’t changed, but these days always baffled me. I remember the noon duty aids would rally all the children up during lunch and recess to sit under a tree. It took me a long time to understand why we did this. I always thought it was because the pollution was exceptionally high on those days, and somehow by sitting under a tree, we “spared” the air. Of course now I understand that we sat under trees because the weather was extremely hot and you could see what I think is heat radiating from the concrete, I could totally be wrong, but that’s what it looked like. It now makes sense logically why we sat under trees, Sacramento has a Mediterranean climate, and is classified as part of the Mesothermal climates where there is great seasonal variations. We have very, very warm summers leading to certain “spare the air day,” and typically mild winters with precipitation.

Sad, Dark Clouds

Today was a sporadic rainy day. When I woke up there was already complete cloud cover so I knew the weather channel did not lie today. Before I bought an iPhone and discovered “The Weather Channel” application, rain would occasionally take me by surprise. So, I was prepared and equipped with an umbrella today. I had to walk my friend to the union after our geography exam review because she does not share the iPhone way of life and therefore was not alerted to bring an umbrella. There is an app for everything including geography and weather. We chatted about of course the rain. We recalled from class how any why rain occurs. When the water in the air becomes saturated and reaches the dew point, which is 100% humidity, condensation occurs onto particles in the air such as pollution. When the atmosphere can no longer hold up these particles they fall down from the sky. We laughed about how we use to think that rain was caused by some strange magic that turns nice, white puffy clouds into sad, dark clouds that cry. As children, we thought this was why it rained. We went to the same elementary school, so this could be the blame for our distorted childhood belief for sad, dark clouds that cried.