the best laid plans

I spent my first day back from the conference (Thursday) nursing a pinched nerve at the base of my neck. I can only assume it was from hoisting luggage around Baltimore and then half sleeping in the upright position on the plane. Then, that night I stepped in a soggy patch of carpet in the hallway and instantly knew...the AC was leaking. Upon closer inspection we realized that the paint on the wall beneath the AC was bubbling and the water had seeped into the coat closet and media room closet (also my scrapbook closet-AHHH!). We shut off the AC, cleared out the closets, and went to bed. We called someone out first thing Friday morning and as soon as the guy looked at the AC told us we needed a new unit. We knew that, but what we didn't know was that our current unit was filled with rust and mold. (Maybe that's why I have a sore throat every morning?) Of course, they couldn't actually do the work until Saturday. Since it was 89 degrees at 11:30 in the morning, we packed up and went to stay with my mom. Saturday morning the AC guy ripped out the old unit (literally, and he took some of the sheetrock with him), only to realize that the new unit didn't fit in our little hallway AC cubbyhole. They told us that our old unit was sized for a studio apartment. Now, our 1400 sq ft house isn't huge, but it needs more air conditioning than a tiny apartment, especially in Texas! (but we won't go into that, lest Keith launch into his "this house was a 5th grade school project gone wrong and was designed by an idiot" tirade) Of course, none of the AC suppliers were open on the 4th, so he left us with a gaping hole in the hallway and a promise that someone would come out on Monday. We were practically melting, so we packed up some more stuff and headed back to Mom's.

Keith took off this morning to wait, and wait, for the new properly-sized unit to arrive. They finally got it installed at 1 pm, and the temperature was 88 degrees. (Thank goodness for a "cool" day today!) When I got home at 4:45, the temperature was 89 degrees. You know, our old crappy air conditioner actually made the temperature go down. The air coming from the vents was warm, so Keith called the company and asked them to come back out and then he shut off the AC. It didn't work so well, though, because even though our new fancy thermostat said "off," it continued to blow hot air at us. Finally, Keith just flipped the breaker to make it stop. At this point, I resorted to sitting on the front porch, because being outside in 90+ degree temperatures was much cooler than being in the house.

Yes, I'm as cranky as I look. In addition to being hot, the new AC is really loud, and they damaged the wall below the AC panel in the hallway. You really shouldn't have to pay several thousand dollars for something that's worse than what it's replacing.

A new AC guy came out and determined the problem: the heater is coming on when the AC runs, which kind of defeats the purpose. He couldn't fix it tonight, but he disabled the heater as a temporary fix and will come back later this week. It's actually blowing cool air now, so we think this will mean we'll get into comfortable temps before bedtime. It's at 84 now, so I'm hopeful.

You know, I had planned to spend my long 4th of July weekend in a much different way. I wanted to unpack, do laundry, catch up on my to do list, and get in lots of scrapbooking time. Instead, I still have to unpack from Baltimore, the contents of my scrapbooking/storage closet are spread around the media room, and I haven't even edited my photos from the conference. (They're coming, though!) However, I still had a good weekend. I had wanted to hang out with Mom some, and I got to hang out with her a lot. We watched Australia and Season 1 of Chuck and grilled out in her apartment's courtyard. While I'm ready to sleep in my own bed instead of on an inflatable mattress, Mom was quite a hostess and even let us do all of our laundry at her place. The AC repairs threw off our church schedule, so the three of us joined Ron and Cindy at 121 Community Church instead and then went out to lunch together to celebrate my birthday from last week. It wasn't the weekend I had planned, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.