Caution! Hot water is extremely hot.

That very sign adorns most restrooms in the building where I work. "Caution: Hot water is extremely hot." I usually make fun of it. I speculate if perhaps they should add a bit more information. Caution, water is also wet! Cuation, wet water is damp! Caution, moving air is moving! Caution, trash is thrown away frequently! The list goes on and on. But today, well today I found that the sign is in the wrong polarity as well.

Let me explain. Today I went for a run at lunch. I do that about once a week when I can. I'd do it more if I got more actual lunches I didn't have to work through. Running at lunch is awesome - I can get in a 5 or 6 mile run without having to get up at 5 in the morning to do it. Instead of taking in all these calories at lunch I burn 800 or so. And sometimes the ability to spend 50 minutes running is all that forms the separation from promotion and prison (as in "he said one more stupid thing in that meeting and I had to kill him" prison). The problem, though, with running at lunch is that you sweat. My devoted imaginary readers, who have read lo these many moons, know that ol' Shifter has been gifted with the sweat glands of 4 adult men, and a baboon. Verily, when Shifter does sweat, droughts in the area become less severe. River levels rise. Shifter is not allowed to run in times of flood warnings. That is the sweating, huffing yeti that is Shifter. (I'm afraid my internet dating prospects may just have plumeted! Oh my!)

So the problem, dear imaginables, is that no one wants to go to a meeting just after lunch with a man who is sweating like 4 grown men and a baboon. They object for some reason. They wrinkle their noses. They move away. They wear rain coats. Never fear, though, Shifter has an answer! He happens to have a rest room right outside of his office that has ... wait for it ... a shower! Yes, that's right, part of the absolute bizarreness of Shifter's work situation is that while he can't park less than half a mile from his office, and he is not allowed to come in 10 minutes late EVER even if he stays 2 hours late every night, he has a shower next to his office. This is so bizarre, in fact, that it causes Shifter to lapse into the third person with very little notice. He'll try to stop that now.

So, I've got a shower next to my office, and I use it after the run. But having the sweat glands of 4 men, plus a baboon, I can take a nice cool shower and still be sweating for quite a while. I sweat 4 times (plus a baboon) as long, after all. So I take COLD showers. So today I put the water on as cold as it would go, cause I had a meeting right after my run and I needed to cool down. Logical, eh?

Well, thing is, there's different kinds of cold. There's cold like water out of the tap. Then there's cold like water out of the "chilled water" setting in your refrigerator. Then there's cold like right under the ice in the polar regions. And then ther'es Oh. My. God. Well I got into the shower today and, yup, Oh. My. God. That @#$er was COLD. Real cold! Intensely cold! Bizarro cold! My muscles were seizing up under the spray. It took 5 mintues to work up the strength to immerse my whole body in the frigid hail that was my shower. I was shivering. I could almost see my breath! (Well, not the last 2, but the rest is all true). I mean Damn. That was cold. But I'll tell you, I was not sweating when I went to my meeting. I think my sweat glands were still in frozen shock.

But that's not the point.

The point is they need a new sign in the restrooms where I work. "Caution, Cold water is Extermely Cold." Not many people will need it, but those frozen few will really need it.