Wherefore art thou air conditioning?

Please accept my apologies for not posting in nearly a week. I have been having an indoor climate emergency at the homestead. Since I am dashing off a quick update from the office this morning, I must be brief. These stolen moments we have together! How they make my heart pound with anticipation! And what if we're caught?! Oh, the intensity of it all.

Anyway. The office is as dead quiet as a morgue. So here it is:

We did make it to the top of the Rainbow Foods in Richfield. Pictures later. New experience: Picnic dinner on the roof of a grocery store. I'm glad I had the camera along. Probably a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Pre-wedding discussionfest - a.k.a. Engagement Encounter - was long, but Jenni and I had some good discussions. Plus our hosts served us burgers and some tasty prone-to-squirting-liquid-butter-out-of-the-center breaded chicken a la rice pilaf (separate meals, obviously). Arm ached all weekend from the tetanus booster. Oh, well. If I step on a nail anytime in the next 10 years it will be worth it.

Not feeling so well Monday. Got through the workday, came home to a hot house, turned on the fans. Long story short, decided to click on the air conditioner before bed to cool down the indoors. Woke up still feeling like I had the flu coming on, so I called in sick. Strangely enough, the blower fan and air conditioner were still running. Groggy, I tumbled back into bed. Hours passed. I finally emerged early in the afternoon. I felt better, but hot. The house was stuffy. The air conditioner was still running, the vent still blowing lukewarm air, and it was HOT in the house. Eighty-three degrees in the dining room, where my theromostat presides over the household.

The awful truth: something in the homestead's HVAC system was drastically wrong. I had run the air conditioner for 14 hours - constantly, it seemed - and the indoor temperature had actually gone UP. Of course, by the time I figured this out and called the fix-it man, the splashes of sunlight on the living room floor were lengthening. The earliest I could get a repair? Thursday afternoon.

By 6 o'clock Tuesday it was 87 degrees in my living room. Thankfully Jenni had arrived and we dashed off to a wedding planning meeting at our (air conditioned) church. When we returned, thus began the regimen of the last couple of days - open every window in the house as the sky turned dusky, turn on the fans, and hope for the best overnight. In the morning, turn off the fans, close the windows, close every shade and curtain, and hope the house can retain some relative coolness. I say relative because it hasn't gotten much cooler than about 70 or the high 60s at night, which isn't enough to keep the house cool when its 90 during the day.

I considered updating the blog last night, but my computer's cooling fan was whirring angrily and I feared that if I ran it much longer it would melt into an oozy puddle of circuitry and colorful mutated plastic. So alas, no updates until today.

The fix-it man should be along this afternoon. I shall leave work early to meet him. Fingers are crossed that all will be comfortably cool in a few hours...