Not Bulletproof

Lut's been sick since last Sunday. I hadn't been too worried about catching it, because often Lut will get sick with some awful infectious bug that half my friends list has, and I'll skate by without anything but minor systems. Rarr! For I am Exercise Woman!

Apparently, Spinach-eating Woman was better at fighting off disease, 'cause last night as I was coming home from work, I noticed the back of my throat and my ears were starting to itch. Rats.

I'd started to walk home, but met Lut halfway there, as he was driving to the store. "I tried to call you to offer a ride," he said. "I figure it must be ridiculously hot out here, because the house is set on 78 as usual and the AC hasn't been able to cool it below 82."

"Actually, it's not bad out," I said. "Low nineties. Cooler than it's been for the past several days. Which the AC handled fine."

"This is not a good sign."
( Ya think? )

Home again

I caught a ride home with one of my co-workers, and found the house at 84 and Lut still wiped out by illness.

After due consideration, I decided to attempt the rescue of our window-unit A/C from the spiders and boxes of the basement.

This actually went much better than I expected. I attacked the area with shop vac and mophandle (to clear cobwebs) as I made my when in., but encountered only a few spiders. There weren't nearly as many boxes under the stairwell as I thought, and all the ones blocking the way to the A/C were either lightweight or empty. The A/C wasn't lightweight, but it wasn't so heavy that I couldn't lift it. So I ran the shop vac over it to get out the worst of the dust and junk, then hauled it upstairs.

Lut roused from slumber to the sight of me lugging the A/C into the bedroom. We blew it out again, this time with compressed air, then mounted it in the bedroom window. The den might've been a better choice, but putting it in the den would've involved digging up an extension cord (the den doesn't have enough power for the two computers as it is; one of them is on an extension cord back to the living room).

Lut puchased this window-unit A/C about ten years ago; we're not sure if it was new at the time or if he got it used. When he moved in with me in a building with central air in 1998, we put it into storage in the basement. When we moved to this house, we likewise shoved it in the basement, against just such a day as today.

So it hasn't actually run in eight years. Thus, it was with some trepidation, and an emergency plan in case it burst into flames, we plugged it in and turned it on.

Cold air emerged.

Victory!

Mold also emerged along with the cold air. I decided to pull the air purifier from the basement and let the two of them duke it out. Seems to be working all right.

There was a brief thunderstorm when I got home, and after it passed I opened up the rest of the house, though I left the A/C running in the bedroom and closed the door to it. It's no cooler but it smells a little less stuffy in here now.

I am utterly wiped out. I finally took some drugs, unable to face my 11th cup of tea for the day. I'm gonna give koogrr a call from my now-cool bedroom, and then crash for a while. G'night, LJ.