Inside, at least 200 people were queued up in a line snaking across the entire front of the store. With kids and elderly family members in tow, they leaned against their shopping carts as if the carts were pieces of driftwood in a vast, thermal sea. Babies cried, flies swarmed, armed militiamen paced menacingly (or something like that; it's possible I was starting to hallucinate). In the final moments of my naivete, I approached a man in the line and asked what all the fuss was about. Was Home Depot selling tickets to an Eagles reunion tour I hadn't heard about?

In the days after the heat storm began, I had the nagging sensation that somewhere along the line I made a very wrong turn. Like the mercury itself, the list of "should haves" — should have gone to law school, should have bought a sleek condo rather than this "charming" but oven-like house — rose higher as the days wore on. In one fleeting, electrolyte-deficient moment, I even started berating myself for not having gotten married in my 20s. Sure, the men I dated in that era would have represented an express train to divorce, but a few of them had air conditioners, which probably could have been worked into the settlement.

These issues might seem to transcend one heat wave, even a bad one, but I'm pretty sure they all come down to the social politics of climate control. Face it, air conditioners are a luxury item. Especially central air conditioners. And in Los Angeles, where it easily can be 20 degrees cooler by the beach than in the Valley or the downtown area (where I live), there's no ignoring the fact that housing prices run in inverse proportion to average temperatures. If you want to keep cool, you have to pay — either in the form of a ridiculously expensive home or a ridiculously expensive energy bill.

I've decided that taking some time to evaluate my life — even if it merely involves feeling sorry for myself and waiting for hours to no avail in line at Home Depot — can be a good thing. For all the meteorological disadvantages of inland living, the heat has afforded us non-beach-dwellers a unique opportunity to beat Westsiders at their own meditative game. After all, many of them pay thousands of dollars to sit in the desert, consume nothing but water and think about how they're going to fix their lives as soon as they can resume eating solid foods. We've been doing all that for free. With all the money I'm saving because I don't need an ashram, I could probably even afford air conditioning. But why quit while I'm ahead?