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Sunday, May 28, 2006

Summer and AC

Summer finally arrived in Minnesota and yesterday was the first day I really needed to use my central air conditioning in the new house. Keep in mind that I've never had central air before, just a window unit that I used, so I was charting new territory.

I went to the thermostat about 11am and turned on cool and set the temperature to 70 (It was currently 74 in the house) and I started writing. I could hear the fan on the AC going, feel cool air coming out of the vents, but it didn't seem really cold and every time throughout the day that I checked the thermostat, the temperature inside the house was climbing: 75, 76, 77, 78. I was sweating and I'm thinking, wow, is there something wrong with my air? I kept setting the desired temperature lower and lower.

Finally, around 6pm, my dad came over and I complained to him. We read instructions on the furnace, on some air exchanger thing and on the thermostat. Nothing seemed to be wrong, but the house wasn't getting any cooler. He went outside to check the unit, but it didn't look as if the fan were moving.

At about 6:45, my dad called one of his lodge buddies. I heard my dad on the phone saying something like panel. I don't remember exactly what he said, but a light bulb turned on inside my brain--the circuit breaker panel.

They'd had the oven and stove flipped off on my circuit breakers too when I moved into the house, and since I closed in February, I was wondering if the circuit breaker for the AC was off too. I went downstairs to look and sure enough, that's exactly what it was! I flipped it on and it made a difference in just a couple of minutes. In fact, by the time the temperature dropped from 78 to 75 degrees inside the house, it began to feel downright cold! Yea!

Since it's supposed to be 93 degrees today, I'm very glad this AC thing is figured out. But man, can you imagine how embarrassing it would have been to call the builder and say, hey, that AC unit you installed is faulty and then discover it was the CB? Thank God for my dad's lodge buddy. :-)

In other news, I wrote 14 1/2 pages yesterday. I wanted to write 20. Scrapping 2 days of work on Friday night hurt my schedule so badly, I'm surprised people all over the world didn't hear my whimpering. I swear, when I have my two projects turned in, and probably revisions done, I'm totally vegging. I'm going to join Netflix and watch movies. I'm going to--well, I can't come up with something else, but I'll think about it and find something else I'm going to do! Not that I'll be able to do nothing for long because I have another book due in January, but I need some time off or my brain is going to implode. :-/

(PS: I'd like to blame the AC incident on my deadline fried brain, but that would be a total lie. Even if I weren't living in an alternate world right now, I still would have had the same problem.)