Had a meeting today with the rest of my work-at-home coworkers. We're in the planning stages of a new project so it was a good time to take a day and do some planning, design, and grab-ass. Since our homes are scattered across Northern California, rather than meet at our soul-sucking corporate office, we picked a convenient house to meet at, in San Ramon, which is about 45 miles outside of San Francisco.

It was foggy here in my San Francisco neighborhood when Jay came by to pick me up for the meeting. I was dressed in cozy warm jeans and a thick polo shirt. Jay was dressed in shorts and a t-shirt. "Shorts, eh" I said mockingly.

"Did you look at the weather report?" Jay asked, "It's going to be 80 degrees in San Ramon today."

"Hmmph," I parried smugly. (It is one of my few regrets that I was never on the debate team in high school.)

We got about one mile outside of my neighborhood when the fog cleared and I began to sweat. San Francisco is crazy with micro-climates and my little neighborhood tends to be foggy. Being an oblivious idiot, it hadn't really occurred to me that inland cities might be a tad warmer in the middle of summer.

(Mark Twain was rumored to have once said, "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.")

I was sweating like a pig within minutes, but I battled the heat with a poorly thought-out strategy of gulping hot coffee. Surprisingly, this did not help. We got to San Ramon about an hour later and it was hot. Africa hot.

Naturally, our host had set up a meeting area for us outside. Granted, it was a shady area outside, but still outside. I suggested that perhaps we should meet inside where it wasn't surface-of-the-sun hot, but since I'm known as a joker and a surly complainer, that comment was taken lightly.

Let me give you all a history lesson. About, say, a million years ago, man was primitive. He grunted, had poor table manners, and generally was not very sophisticated or knowledgeable. These beings are anecdotally referred to as "cavemen". Do you know why they are called cavemen? I'll tell you why. It's because one of the very first things that cavemen figured out was TO GO INSIDE THE DAMN CAVE!

Anyway, my coworkers took pity on me and we held our meeting inside. When lunch arrived, however, they were unable to restrain their more primitive urges, and they lurched outside, knuckles dragging on the ground. It was nuts, I tell you. Nuts! The temperature was, and I am not exaggerating, 2 million degrees. I am serious. Although I had planned wisely for the hot weather by ordering spicy Kung Pao chicken (extra Pao please!), I still sweated like a pig.

Thankfully, we adjourned back inside for the remainder of the meeting and I slowly recovered.

The meeting itself went pretty well. A design meeting for our group is 25% fiddling with our laptops, 25% dick jokes, 25% mocking the rest of the company, and 25% tickle fight. Somewhere in there we actually got some work done too. I kick ass at tickle fights though.