(take note that I wrote this at home yesterday and brought it in to work today to post it)
so Friday night, this would be 27th, I got absolutely hammered. Shocking, I know…I’m in the condo trying to recover my equilibrium (and some hydration since I’d recently puked my guts out) when I get a call from my roommate saying that the air was not working and she was going to stay somewhere else for the night. She had an acquaintance at church retired from the heating and air business and he would come over the next day to look at it…yada, yada, yada. I really don’t remember the hard and fast details as I was a bit sobriety deprived. Before you laugh and tsk, tsk me for my overindulgence, I’ll share that I haven’t done that in forever plus I took two Aleve with some water and ate a few crackers thus not suffering any ill effects when I woke the next morning either.
My brother had mentioned that the next day (Saturday) we would pack up and head to the state park for some beach time before we headed home in the afternoon so I put on a bathing suit and began loading the car. I wasn’t very far into it before Nana told me that they weren’t planning to stop after all. So I just had time to change my clothes and jump in the car before it was time to go. No time for a bath or anything (my homage to you KP!) before we started slogging it back to Alabama.
After a VERY long and hot journey in a small car when I was sleepy, I arrive home to a house that was approximately 15 million degrees. Roomie’s friend did show up and said one of the wires to the compressor looked as if it had burned out. Luckily for us, his stepson was in the heating and air business, unfortunately he didn’t answer the phone. The friend said he would call him the next day and to open all the windows and get the fans running.
Now I was saturated in sweat, tired, hungry, and ready to have a cold shower and a cool bed to sleep in. So I did what any other grown up would do and found a service in the yellow pages that offered 24 hour emergency service. The poor cats were so hot we were concerned that they would get heat stroke or something similar and they got dunked in some bathwater and left to dry where at least the fan could help cool them off. Wet cats are some of the saddest mammals known to mankind, eerily rat like and EXTREMELY pissed off :) Two hours later we were beginning to cool off and decided to get dinner from the Slabhouse. When we got back I found a catydid(sp?) on the ceiling and the fun ensued. A screaming broom attack took out the little green bastard and we settled in for dinner and a movie. Stephen King’s Rose Red was disappointing... Sunday found me in the recliner, reading biographies for the next book group meeting (See KT, I was working…sort of!). How was I to know that this brief idyll was not to last…?
About 3 o’clock Monday morning I woke up from a nightmare in which I was smothering, only to discover that I really was. Too much cover, not enough air. The air was out again. I was on the phone with the heating and air people before 8am and they came over again pretty quickly all things considered. The same problem had occurred except that it was a brand new cord that burned out this time…in only a day, day and a half. My poor heat pump was diagnosed with a weak compressor and I had to buy a new unit. Luckily I had a few bucks tucked away, albeit for another home improvement project that is now on the back burner, but at least I had it…I can’t complain about the timing.
So now, here I am again, sitting in the recliner, cooling off, watching a movie (Tyler Perry is always an entertaining choice) and wondering what to make for dinner. If I had internet access at home then I could post this entry now, but I’ll have to save it to my handy-dandy jumpdrive and send it out there on the morrow.
On the book front, I’ve finished three biographies: one a compilation of eight vignettes about royal brides entitled Crowned in a Far Country, one on the life and philosophy of Katherine Hepburn entitled How to Hepburn, and the last, Born on a Blue Day, about a man with a high functioning autistic spectrum disorder called Asperger’s Syndrome. Right now I’m trying to get through a biography of Madame Tussaud, of wax museum fame. It’s a little dry but I am learning a lot about the French Revolution and I certainly did not understand the complex role the wax museums played in the society of that time. However, as there were no newspapers, televisions, magazines, or other media/periodicals to give the public the glimpses into high society life that the last few generations have come to take for granted. As long as those high society people dressed down, they could often circulate among the public unrecognized and free. No Branjelinas, Bennifers, or any other combos to scintillate and scandalize. I was tickled by the fact that as some people went out of fashion and others entered in, Curtius and his protégé Madame Tussand simply beheaded the wax figures and attached a more popular visage to the torsos. I don’t know why that’s so funny to me, but it is. I could definitely see some benefit to that with respect to Geraldo Rivera… :)
Well, I’m rambling now so it’s obviously time to stop and see about dinner.
Night ya’ll!
htw
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