Heat Exhaustion Exhaustion

Well, last night was, uh, uncom­fort­able here at home. With the air con­di­tion­ing out and the tem­per­a­tures still being in the triple dig­its until mid-evening, it’s kind of like liv­ing in a sauna. It’s bad enough on Angela and I, but poor Har­ry and Mag­gie have it the worst.

Yes­ter­day, while we were at work, Ange­la’s res­i­dent was kind enough to buy a cou­ple of portable elec­tric fans from Tar­get and bring them to the house for the dogs. He opened up some win­dows and turned the fans on high here down­stairs in addi­tion to refill­ing their water bowls. Of course, our stu­pid muts decid­ed they’d rather sleep upstairs, where the tem­per­a­ture was around the mid-90’s. We appre­ci­ate what Tyler did, even if our dogs are too dumb to ben­e­fit much from it.

Last night was every bit as mis­er­able as you might imag­ine. We camped out down­stairs on the sleep­er sofa. I refrain from say­ing that we slept there, since we did­n’t real­ly get much sleep at all. I was sick to my stom­ach for most of the night; prob­a­bly from the heat in addi­tion to a siz­able din­ner. We had all (both of us and the two dogs) gone to the gro­cery store and Ruby Tues­day’s dri­ve-up ser­vice ear­li­er, just to get some relief from the oven that our house has become. Those new steak ham­burg­ers? Tasty, but prob­a­bly not the best meal when you’re in this kind of heat. Any­way, we sur­vived (not that we have ever real­ly been in any seri­ous dan­ger, I just enjoy being melo­dra­mat­ic) the night.

This morn­ing, Angela took the dogs to get a sum­mer hair­cut at PetS­mart. We fig­ured they could ben­e­fit from the air con­di­tion­ing as well as the lack of a wooly coat (espe­cial­ly Mag­gie, who is like a wool rug when she has long hair). Also, our air con­di­tion­er repair­man is here and he seems to have iden­ti­fied the prob­lem: a burned out capac­i­tor. While not a flux capac­i­tor, it is rough­ly that size. I hon­est­ly did­n’t know that heat pumps had capac­i­tors, but it would seem they have ones about the size of a soda can. Ours appar­ent­ly died some­time on Tues­day. He’s off to the elec­tric sup­ply com­pa­ny to pick up a replace­ment. By the time the dogs get home from the dog-bar­ber, we should have a once-again cooled house.

The high today is sup­posed to be around 95°, with thun­der­show­ers like­ly tonight. Sounds great to me.