In the dim and distant past, before man had Tweeted, before the culinary magicians had impregnated pizza crust with not only cheese but cheese and bacon, I lived a simple life.

Simpler, anyway.

It occurred to me the other evening, when I very nearly ruptured a neck muscle reaching for my smartphone to check a football score while I was in bed, that my obsession with the Internet’s instant information is not altogether healthy.

And not only for my trapezius.

My complaint is a common one, of course, in these days of wi-fi ubiquity and powerful computers smaller than one of those Casio calculator watches the smartest kid in your high school was always fiddling with during algebra II.

We Google and we Facebook and we whatever verb goes with Instagram not because we learn something profound from every foray.

We do it because we can.

And we do it because the information, no matter how banal (and often as not, it’s pretty banal), is languishing in digital purgatory, waiting for us to click or tap or swipe.

I didn’t really care about the football game that tied my neck in knots; I don’t, in fact, even remember who was playing.

But I knew my phone would tell me what I didn’t need to know, and I was helpless to resist its 3G charms.

I used the word “obsession” a few paragraphs back but I exaggerated.

Were I to carefully catalogue the daily diversions on my phone or my laptop I doubt the average would come to more than 45 minutes.

I don’t think I’m neglecting any of the many parts of my life that are vastly more important to me – wife, kids, lawn edges that need trimming, car dashboard that needs dusting.

And yet it seems to me that I don’t relax quite as deeply as I used to when I get home from work.

When I recline on the sofa, a book in hand, I rarely can pass more than 10 minutes or so before I feel a compulsion, slight but undeniable, to get up and check my email or the Oregon Duck football message boards or, that ultimate in ever-changing data, the weather.

I don’t always do this.

But more often than not, I do.

This troubles me mainly because I detect the stench of addiction, a personality trait which, fortunately, has not afflicted me in the more common, and damaging, ways.

It’s a trifle unsettling that when I ask myself this question – Could I shut off the wi-fi and unplug the computer for a week straight? – I’m far from certain that I could truthfully answer “yes.”

. . .

This was a hot summer in Baker City, occasionally uncomfortably so, but soothe yourself with this:

It could have been worse.

And would have been worse had you spent the season elsewhere.

But I’m not talking about the usual suspects such as Boise or Phoenix, where you expect the asphalt to very nearly melt come Independence Day.

I’m talking about Eugene.

Lest you accuse me of meteorological mischief, I assure you I have the statistics to back my claim.

It sounds improbable, I know.

Eugene, like the rest of the Willamette Valley, is renowned for the moderation of its climate. With the temperate presence of the world’s biggest ocean just 50 miles or so to the windward, and with an average elevation something less than 500 feet above sea level, the valley tends to be both cooler in summer, and warmer in winter, than the higher lands east of the Cascades, where the ocean’s moderating influence is flaccid.

In Baker City, for instance, the average high temperature in July is 85 degrees, 3 degrees warmer than Eugene’s average.

But there was nothing average about this summer in Eugene.

The temperature there climbed to 90 degrees or above on 36 days.

That not only eclipsed the old record of 31 days, set in 1958, but it more than doubled Eugene’s yearly average of 15 days with a high of 90 or hotter.

Baker City summers usually are considerably warmer than Eugene’s. We average 24 days of 90 or warmer each year. In nine years since World War II Baker City has logged more than 36 days of 90-degree heat, which is Eugene’s new all-time record.

But this summer we were no match for Eugene.

Baker City has had 27 days of 90 degrees or warmer, scarcely above average.

More notably, this is the first year on record – Baker City statistics date to 1943 – that Eugene has recorded more 90-degree days than Baker City.

Baker City was actually ahead, 17 days to 16, at the end of July.

But Eugene surged past us in August with 14 days of 90 degrees or more, doubling Baker City’s total.

Eugene has added to its lead during September, with six stifling days to Baker City’s three.

The meteorological explanation for this summer’s anomalous temperatures in Eugene is, I expect, of little interest to most. Suffice it to say that California sent more than just some of its excess population northward this summer.

But the significance of the statistics – Eugene residents able to outboast Baker City’s, as it were – seems to me noteworthy.

All in all it’s been quite a 10-month stretch, weatherwise, in Eugene.

In December 2013 the city set its all-time record for the coldest temperature, at 10 below zero.

But at least Baker’s reputation for frigidity remains unsullied.

That same month the temperature here plummeted to 20 below zero. And unlike Eugene, that wasn’t even close to a record hereabouts.

Jayson Jacoby is editorof the Baker City Herald.