Roatan

Roatan
Pirate ship?

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Day Eighty-Four - Triple Digits and Crappy A/C's SUCK!

Okay, I get why air conditioners only break when it is hot.  I mean, if it wasn't hot, it might break, but you wouldn't know it until it was hot.  So, the only time an air conditioner can break successfully is if it is hot enough outside for you to notice it.  The good news for my home air conditioner is that it is hot enough outside for me to notice that it is broken.  

Last night when I went to bed at nearly midnight it was 84 degrees downstairs in my house.  My bedrooms are upstairs and it is usually a few degrees warmer upstairs than downstairs.  My master bedroom is the hottest room in the house.  I slept with two fans on high speed all night.  I woke up at 2:53 and it was still 83 degrees in my living room downstairs.  At 3:35 I decided to change the air filter in the A/C.  After all, there is no point in having brand new ones and not using them.  I think that helped slightly.  

I finally went back to sleep during the third episode of I Love Lucy on channel 312.  I think it must have been around 4:30 or 5:00.    Channel 312 is running the ones where the Ricardo's and Mertz's have moved to the country.  I like most of those but I like the Hollywood ones the best of all.  My favorite one of the country ones is the tulip one.  That one wasn't on last night. 

Right now it is 81.5 degrees in my living room.  The thermostat is set on 77.  It won't get there.  I have already called the home warranty company.  While I had them on the phone, I decided to go ahead and report my bathroom sink too.  The master bathroom sink has been draining slowly for about two years.  When it gets really bad, I usually pour some liquid Drain-o in and it helps.  But it has never done away with the clog entirely.  So, when the guy at 1st American Home Warranty asked if there was anything else after he took my A/C claim, I thought "what the heck?".  Of course, I have to pay the service call fee of $55 to each of the people they send out.  So hopefully, for the price of $110 total, I will be semi-cool again and be able to wash my face AND brush my teeth without pausing for 5 minutes between each task for the sink to drain.

The funny thing is that this is Texas and it is June, so I consider the A/C thing to be an emergency.  The guy at 1st American said that I would hear from each of the two vendors by the end of business tomorrow to schedule an appointment.  I hung up the phone and within two minutes the plumbing company who will handle the bathroom sink called and scheduled an appointment for tomorrow afternoon between noon and 4:00.  I have not heard from the people who are supposed to handle the A/C.

OH MY GOD!!!!!!  The A/C people just called!!!!!  They will be here sometime tomorrow between 9 and 5.  That is as much as they can narrow it down to at this point and considering that it will be 105 here today, I am okay with that!  I have just changed my thermostat to 82 degrees so that the A/C will shut of periodically and to see if it is capable of keeping the temperature at a higher setting or if it just isn't cooling at all.  When I stand under the vent I can feel air that is slightly cooler than the 81.5 degree air in the house.  So, maybe setting it at 82 will make a difference.  

The cats should be happy today.  It will be almost warm enough in the house for them.  I, on the other hand, am going to have to figure out what I am going to do outside of the house.  I went to the grocery store and Bed, Bath and Beyond yesterday.  So, all of those errands are out of the way.  Maybe I will go to a movie when it gets really hot this afternoon.  I'm not much of a movie goer.  But if it is hot enough, I can put myself through it.  The grocery store yesterday may be what finally pushed the A/C over the edge.  I came home and waited as late as I could to cook supper.  But finally at 6 I had to start cooking the taco meat for my tacos.  When I turned the stove on, that is when the temp in the house went over 82 degrees.  It was 81 before I started cooking and when I finished it was 84.  It is hard to believe that taco meat on the stove for 20 minutes can make a 3 degree difference in the house temperature.  It never cooled back down after that.  I always consider 82 degrees to be my magic mark.  It is the temperature that I judge whether or not the air conditioner is working properly by.  If it can't get my house below 82 degrees then I figure it is broke!  

If I was still working at the former employer (who shall not be named) I would have gotten a new central air unit at the end of April.  I had been saving for one and with my comp check and income tax return I was going to take the dive!  I was so excited.  But when everything happened, I decided that I should wait in case I needed to live on that money.  I would give just about anything for the A/C guy to come out here tomorrow and say it has to be replaced so that 1st American would pay for the bulk of it.  But I am sure that they will just put another band aid on it or he will say it needs to be replaced but the cause of the problem isn't something that 1st American will cover.  That is sort of the way my year has gone.

Is it sad that I am jealous of those people in Florida because they got a hurricane and we didn't?  I mean, I don't want death or destruction or anything like that.  But 3 days of rain would do a lot to keep the temperature down below 100.  Granted, afterwards it would be like a steam bath here.  But the 3 days of rain would be nice while it was happening.  I have discussed my stance on weather and temperatures here before.  I don't think I am that demanding weather-wise.  I don't complain when it is 90 degrees outside.  In fact, I am fairly happy at 90 degrees.  Triple digits are when I get ugly about it.  Triple digits do no one any good.  I can understand the benefit to the environment of the temperature dropping below freezing occasionally.  I don't like it, but I understand it.  But I cannot believe that the temperature going above 99 ever helps the environment in any way.  So what's the point?  And don't start preaching to me about global warming.  There were triple digit temperatures long before power plants were ever built.  

Okay, I am going to turn this computer off now.  It is back above 82 degrees in my house and this thing puts off some heat.  So, I should shut it down.  Have a good day and stay cool!

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