Thursday, August 28, 2008

early evening

Mom & Dad to the rescue…again

Yay, the a/c guys are on their way out with a new a/c unit to install.  We won’t die of heatstroke after all.  I will never take cold air on a hot, hot, hot day for granted again.  24 hours of this has royally sucked.  We’re stressed, the pets are stressed and confused, we’re worried about the pets.  We have fans set up all over the house to attempt to keep it from getting past, oh, 90+ degrees inside, but half the cats are afraid of the fans.  Carlo has decided that he’s never leaving the master bedroom again - there are some scary whirring monsters outside of the bedroom door and he wants no part of them, thank you very much.  We slept for a few hours with the bedroom door mostly shut to try to keep as much cool air in as possible, but to allow small visitors to come & go as well.  Let’s just say that many of them came in and stayed, and were extra well-behaved.  Perhaps they were worried we’d toss them in the tv room, where it was about 95 degrees even with the windows open.  I’m so happy that we bought the portable a/c unit last year.  Without it, we would’ve probably had to take some of the pets to the vet’s office for boarding because they weren’t handling the heat very well.  We have some elderly cats & dogs, not to mention two people who don’t handle heat well anymore thanks to the Fibro.  We could’ve all slept in a big kennel.

terribly early in the morning

Please tell me that it can’t get worse than this

We both lost our jobs, we’re close to foreclosure, our two pool motors died, our sports card store can’t open until we get our business license (and it’s taking an awfully long time to get here from Carson City), and at 4:15 this morning we had a power surge that tripped several circuits.  What we didn’t realize at the time, because we were in the master bedroom, which has its own little portable a/c unit because it gets extra hot in there, is that air never came back on.  We called and got a guy out here right away, and he informed us that our compressor is dead.  A compressor doesn’t cost that much less than a whole unit and it only has a one year warranty versus a five year warranty, so it’s not worth it to get the cheaper of the two.  However, I’m sure it’s pretty clear that we can’t afford to fork over $3400-$4200 in the morning to have the new unit installed.  And, with the temperatures at 107/108, it’s getting up to 100 degrees in some rooms in the house…and 94 in the hallway upstairs.  We don’t know what it was downstairs, since everything we do is upstairs, but it wasn’t much cooler.  The big dogs were panting downstairs, the little dogs and a couple of cats, were panting upstairs…and we were laying on the bed, underneath the fan, whining.  Ptooey.

Thursday, August 07, 2008

mid-afternoon

It’s My Birthday - So, Back to Bed for a Nap

I apologize for my long absence, and I’ll explain it all once it’s no longer my birthday, because birthday blog entries shouldn’t be about bad bad bad and more bad things.  So, we’re off to take a little nap, feed the pets, then take showers and go out to get me my birthday presents - an ink cartridge from Office Depot, so I can print out my free ice-cream offer from Cold Stone Creamery, a free burger from Red Robin, and then a marathon of recorded “So You Think You Can Dance” episodes, while eating said free ice-cream.  Oh yeah, and if Leigh-Ann can find a little cash amongst her belongings, she’s gonna buy me a blaster box from Wal-Mart or Target.  A blaster box is a box of sports cards from a retail store, not the fancy expensive boxes of cards from the hobby stores that are priced from $100+.  I can get a blaster box for ten bucks.

Today, we’re not going to read the mail on my birthday, because last year’s mail on this date contained a foreclosure notice on the house.  And we read that right as we were going out to dinner to celebrate my birthday.  To add insult to injury, while we were eating, Barry Bonds broke Hank Aaron’s home run record, so it replayed five gazillion times while we were eating.  Ugh, Barry Bonds was almost worst than the foreclosure notice.  Oh, and we’re still in the house for now, so that’s good.  Anyway, I’m off for a couple hour nap, but before that, I’m going to eat my favorite new cereal (dry, it’s better that way), FiberOne w/ Honey Clusters (good for me and tasty) while reading the Ty Cobb book by Al Stump.  I recommend it highly.  You’ll even find yourself feeling sorry for the poor guy lots of times and see that a lot of his behavior was brought about by the tragic death of his beloved father, and then the way he was treated right afterwards as he first made it to the big leagues with the Detroit Tigers.  He was treated so poorly that a less determined person would’ve quit and gone home.

Also, a happy birthday to childhood school friends who shared our birthday, Shaun Robertson & LeeAnne Hayashida.  I have no idea where they are now, but I hope they’re doing well.  I do know that LeeAnne’s brother is the coach of our high school football team though, so I should probably see if I can track her down.  Also, a very special birthday wish to one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, and not only does she share the same birthday, but she shares the same name.  Happy birthday, Nancy - you’re the best!