The Silly Season

We're in the height of summer here, where temps are above 95 (34 C) for days, sometimes weeks at a time. While this might sound good to my Chicago and Minnesota friends right now, trust me when I say it's miserable. It's a wet heat, and there are no clouds to offer shade. Our air conditioning, like many in Melbourne, is evaporative cooling which makes it cool AND humid. This is probably terrific in Arizona, but it's not terrific here. Our house can never get cooler than 24 C during the day, and we walk around feeling damp all day. We leave damp footprints on the floor.  I washed my hair yesterday morning, and it stayed damp all day. It's gross.

It's the season that Australia is on the lookout for bush fires. Every day in the regional (not city) areas of the country a fire warning is given. I don't take the kids into the mountains on high or extreme fire warning days.

It's the kids' summer break, so at least we don't need to get dressed up or be forced to go anywhere at a certain time. We've been favouring pools and movie theatres. We window shop as well, because malls are really well chilled.

A friend and I were discussing taking our kids strawberry picking. I know a place that's only open on Wednesdays and Sundays. She said, "I'd call ahead to make sure they're actually open. It's the Silly Season."

This was my first encounter with this expression. It comes from so many people being on vacation that those who remain are much more casual about everything. Opening hours on many businesses are shortened, or don't match the posted hours. Some places don't open at all. Now that I know the name for the phenomenon, I realise I'm seeing it all over the place this month. Examples:

• Joel's been going to work at 10 and coming home at 4. While his job offers a little flexibility in hours, it is usually a full 8 - 10 hours a day. He can do this because a) lots of people are on holiday at his work and no one's really checking, and b) the doctors who send him samples are on holiday, so no samples are coming in. Joel stays until he's done every day, but this week "done" is in at 10, out at 4. 

• Our landscaper built a retaining wall that was supposed to be on the edge of our property that spilled onto our neighbors property by about 5 cm. When Joel asked him to fix it, he just quit, leaving behind a huge mess.

• Said landscaper was supposed to handle the concreting around our house. All the concreting is done except the ramp leading from the street to our driveway. We've been contacting many, many concreters and leaving messages offering the job. Even though it's a simple job that can be done in a couple hours,and the going rate for this couple of hours work is about $4,000, not one is even calling me back.

• We ordered window blinds on 8 December before we left for the US, and were told it would take about three weeks to manufacture, but they stopped between Christmas and New Year's. When we got back to Australia on 3 January, I contacted the head of the business to get an estimate on delivery. She said she'd get back to me. That was a week ago - no peep from her.
•  We were trying to transfer Australian money to our American account. On the transfer web site, you're meant to enter the routing number of your bank account in the US and it will look up the bank. When I did this, the website didn't look up the address. I called the transfer company to ask, "What's up?" Their respone, verbatim: "Ah yeah, nah, we're aware of that problem." then nothing. Are you working on it? "I think they're working on it, yeah." Long pause while I wait for something, anything that resembled customer service. Finally, "So how can I transfer money if your site can't look up the bank?" Her response was that I could enter the information (bank branch, branch address) manually. 

"But I don't have the information."
"It should be on your US bank statement."
"But it isn't."
"Then you'll have to call your US bank."
"But it's 3 AM in the US. "
"Yeah, nah, I don't know what else to tell you."  And THEN she asked if there was any other way she could help me that day.

Joel solved the problem by saying if I Googled the routing number I could get the information needed, and he was right (He's handy that one; I think I'll keep him). By the way, our bank branch is in Henrico, VA. Pretty sure I've never been to Henrico in my life.

I asked Joel if he remembers this lazy, don't care, "she'll be right mate" attitude from when he was growing up, and he said the silly season lasted from Christmas to February when he was little. His dad called it the kretzmachen in Yiddish (sorry for the spelling), or the time where people just sit around and scratch themselves because absolutely nothing gets done. My father-in-law was a hard-working small business owner who rarely took days off. He did not take kindly to this months-long defacto slowdown. I don't either.

As most of you have heard, we moved recently. If you need my new address, email me or my mom. But the reason I haven't shared house photos is more silly season nonsense. The Internet company needs to run a line under our street to get a line to our house. They've dug the pit to house the Internet equipment, but haven't yet run the line. To their credit, Joel gets weekly calls saying, "Just keeping your updated; there's been no work done on getting Internet to your house." Thanks, mate! So we've been using a hotspot which doesn't allow big uploads like photos, so the house blog entry will have to wait until our Internet comes through or until I go back to school and have a free hour. Not sure which will happen first.