No Life

Okay, so I read it in ten hours; that's sort of a day, isn't it?

It's a Weekend Post . . .

. . . meaning it's a little rambling and too short (except for both of you who read this and wonder if there's something better to occupy your time - like changing the furnace filter or cleaning the gutters).

Well, the A/C is back up and running. My farewell to the old system was nearly as tearful as I figured it would be: I started kicking it and screaming uncontrollably until I tore open my hand on the unit's rusty exterior and bled all over the place, bringing a few tears to my eyes. Fortunately, the contractor is a very capable medic, and he stopped the bleeding in short order. I probably should have gone to the hospital, but so far fighting lockjaw has proven to be a good workout.

Okay, maybe I embellished the last paragraph a bit. I did trip over the unit and scraped my hand on the concrete, but I did tear up a bit. The contractor just shook his head sadly and went about his work.

However, as I sat at my desk at work and pretended to actually do something, I realized that this has not been a relaxing summer - far from it. Fortunately, my awesome fiance agreed to my logical, well-reasoned request to do nothing this weekend (replace "logical, well-reasoned request" with "pathetic cries and whining" and you get a clearer picture of the dynamic in my household). So we're going to hit Borders on Saturday morning for my Harry Potter fix (I'd go tonight but that damn restraining order is still in place) and head up to the pool for a day of swimming and doing little. And yes, I already told Darcy she's going to be a Harry Potter widow until I finish the book sometime on Sunday or Monday.

The only drawback to this plan is the pool frowns on alcohol consumption. I'll have to hold off until Sunday, when the housework begins.

Perverse and Twisted, It Is

My house has a twisted sense of humor. Take this weekend as an example:

The plumbers and carpenters cleared out Friday, leaving behind a patched up ceiling, a mostly-new plumbing stack and thin layer of dust over the house.

We spent much of Saturday cleaning up and setting the kitchen up again. The house was getting dangerously close to livable again, a state of affairs that the house was simply NOT going to tolerate.

After completing our labors for the day, we headed out to catch the new Harry Potter movie (review coming soon; short version: meh) and returned home. As I walked into the back yard, I thought the air conditioner sounded kind of funny.

After going inside and feeling warm air blowing from the vents that it WAS making a funny noise, only not funny HA HA, just . . . funny.

The second sign of trouble was when I walked out and felt the heat radiating off the air conditioning unit. The third sign? The unit was running but the fan wasn't turning. That's bad.

A contractor who came out Sunday confirmed my worst fears: it was fixable, but would dropping $800 into a 17-year-old A/C unit make a lot of sense, especially when the compressor was probably damaged due to the fan not turning for a couple of hours?

So suffice to say, we're getting a new air conditioner and furnace tomorrow. Whoever buys this house in the next year or two is going to sing my praises. I probably won't be alive, since the house, sensing that I've replaced most everything that can fail, will either spontaneously combust or drag itself outside the time/space continuum, a la the end of Poltergeist.

Hopefully, I'll be out when it finally happens, but I don't think the house is going to let me get away that easily.

More Money Than Brains

Crazed fans spend $500 to create plastic shards and spare parts. After you factor in the $500 they probably paid someone to stand in line for them throughout Friday, you have a spectacular waste of money. I would have sold them a box of broken phones for only $100.