This is what Vegas feels like in the summer. I’ll have my June flame-broiled, thank you.

I have a love/hate relationship with air conditioning.

Living in Las Vegas, it is an absolute necessity. But for 6 months of the year, it also turns casinos into meat lockers and becomes an enormous drain on bank accounts—the kind of bills that make you gasp a little and run to the thermostat to bump the temp up to 79. I spent my first summer here in a mild state of shock. The city felt like the inside of an oven every time I stepped onto the pavement. I probably did a lot of muttering about how the desert wasn’t meant to sustain human life.

But now, I’m a Vegas summer pro. I know that I have to go for runs before 7 a.m. That even pools can be unbearably hot. That anything left in your car in the sun will melt, including pieces of the car itself.

I’m not sure when Tovin and I decided that we weren’t going to turn our AC on ’til June 1 this year, but once the gauntlet was set, there was no going back. We were going to wait—and sweat—it out.

Well, today’s June 1, and let me tell you, it feels great in here. The thermostat is set to a balmy 78; I didn’t wake up to splash cold water on myself in the middle of the night; even the house plants look happier. And Samba? We’ve already played a few rounds of indoor morning fetch. Poor girl is stuck in an all-season fur coat, after all.

Of course, the inevitable power bill and accompanying gasp will arrive in a few weeks. And of course, I’ll hate paying it. But that’s just the price of living in the desert. And I can spend the extra $100 we saved in May on something way better than air conditioning—like dinner.