We have multiple fans going, and are swilling lemonade fortified with Ketel One. I’m on vacation and the wife works from home, so no problem there.
What is your favorite way of dealing with the heat wave?
I lounge around the house and complain loudly. It doesn’t help, but it does guarantee that my housemates are at least as miserable as I am. I’d drink iced tea, but it’s never made when I want it, it’s too hot to even think about boiling the water for it, and I’m too sleepy and cheap to go buy some. Dinner is anything that doesn’t need to be cooked.
Last night, we watched the last episode of some CSI show on the DVD, then watched one we’d already seen because we were too hot and lazy to get up and change the disc.
Lie in a cold tub until my core temperature is lowered. Brrr! I’m in flannel pajamas!
I spend lots of time submerged in my pool with generous quality A/C breaks. Seriously, after work, I’ve been coming home, putting on a bathing suit and diving in the pool. I knew the dang thing would be good for something.
I stay inside and alternate between watching soccer (I loves my DVR!), watching the Padres and browsing the SDMB. It works surprisingly well.
Stay inside with the AC where possible, and work on things that need to get done. Don’t open the windows, because then inside gets like outside. That’s what just about everybody does down here, because we have pretty much a permanent heat wave from May through November. It’s been in the 90s every day for a couple of months.
I chatted with my brother in Vancouver, BC, yesterday, and it was 92 degrees - in their house. They’ve had temps up around 100 for more than a week. It was 104 in the interior of BC where relatives live. He lives in a new house in a new suburb, and none of them have central air. I would have thought that most new homes come with a heat pump, but I guess not.
I dampen a hand towel, wring it out just enough so it won’t drip, wrap it around my neck and then sit near a fan. Sometimes, for variety, I lay the towel my chest or belly. As long as it’s in direct contact with your skin, it does a great job of cooling your whole body down.
We have A/C now, so we just do what most people do. But back in the day, we’d go grocery shopping (and I’d walk like a cheap gangster’s moll then he’d say, “you’re meltin’ all that stuff!” a la Steve Martin…and I’d swoon) or to the movies.
I walk out my front door and step into the cool waters of Lake Michigan. When it gets REALLY hot, that is, like 88F.
Fans, ice tea and on really hot nights, a freezer pack right by my face.
Like most people here, I don’t really beat the heat so much as retreat from the heat.
I was lucky enough to get an air conditioned dorm room for the summer semester (most of the dorms are in fairly old, A/C-less buildings) and I’m taking full advantage.
Its all about the AC. My house has central air, my car has a good unit, and its always under 75 in the computer room at work. I only notice the heat traveling from the house to the car, stuff like that. Forget doing anything outside when its in the upper 90s which its been for a while now.
Open the house up at night, then close up in the morning, so as to get all that cool night air in for the day. When the heat inside the house finally gets unbearable, break out the AC. And in my room, which has a big window, southern exposure, and lousy ventilation, I put cold, wet washcloths on bare skin and point the fan at them. Ahhhhhh…
Anyone else read this headline as “What do you do to beat the meat?” :eek:
To answer the OP, when I’m not sitting in front of a fan or a/c, I like to go bowling. Nice cool building, and I’m doing something I enjoy.
Take a really big T-shirt (mid-thigh length), get it soaking wet, wring it out, then put it on. Very refreshing!
I like to go bowling to beat my meat, too.
Ceiling fans, oscillating stand fan and a whole-house fan.
Doesn’t do much to beat the humidity, though.
I work at home, sans central air…so right about now (3ish Eastern) I just sit and get grumpy.
When I’m done with work I usually take a ride in the car with the AC on, go shopping or go to my folks’ where they have AC.
By the evening I just open the windows and turn on the whole-house fan. I take a cold shower before bed and sleep nekkid with the oscillating fan on.
I’m still learning how to get maximum comfort for minimum cost. But by next summer I hope to have central air 
As I lie on a chaise longue in my superbly appointed mansion by the side of an indoor olympic size swimming pool drinking Chablis, several bikini-clad nymphets tend to my every need.
Two of them fan me with giant palm leaves while another gently mops my fevered brow with a linen cloth soaked in cool spring water. A fourth girl tests the pool water to make sure the temperature is exactly to my stringent requirements. A fifth is preparing a gourmet meal of smoked salmon, specially flown in from Fortnum & Mason by helicopter. Soothing music emanates from a state of the art Bang & Olufsen sterephonic system as yet another nymphet performs the Dance of the Seven Veils on the pool’s diving platform.
Times are really hard.
Last weekend, I finally got one of these here vests to wear while riding my motorcycle.
Wow. Just wow! Should have done that years ago. Doesn’t require but a few MPH breeze to cause noticable coolage. Even seems to help just wearing it around the house.
Yeah, here where they won’t run air conditioning to our offices, damned if they don’t make sure those machines stay nice and cool.
So at the office, closed windows and a high fan. At home, air conditioning in the living room which eventually spreads to the rest of the house. In the car, just sweat.