The Annual A/C Debate, or, what to do when the dewpoint hits 70F.
Long about early May, when Nature is so excited about the thawing soil and warming temperatures that the din of unfurling leaves keeps me awake at night, I begin my own modest preparations for the toastier months of the year.
I dig to the bottom of the shoe pile for flip flops and I wedge wool sweaters, scarves, hats and gloves back into their bin in the closet.
I roll up my down comforter and unfold the thin blanket that will spend most summer nights angrily kicked to the floor at the foot of my bed.
I get out a dish towel and re-mummify my fruit bowl against the inevitable onslaught of fruit flies that will arrive on or inside Stop & Shop produce.
And finally, I take down the small fan that has spent the winter atop a high shelf, prop it against the screen of my now permanently open bedroom window and switch it to the lowest (and quietest) setting. With the exception of a few torrential thunderstorms when the windows must be shut, this little fan will spin steadily until about the 1st of October.
I feel rather pleased with myself after completing this little ritual, like I’ve managed to preemptively defeat the coming Summer Oven of New England with a minimalist tool set worthy of MacGyver. I entertain a certain self righteous satisfaction that, unlike the carbon foot printing monsters up and down the street, I have not run out and bought yet another 40,000 BTU air conditioner unit. And the sturdiness of my moral fiber relative to those Central Air people... well... I think it goes without saying...
Then June happens. At the beginning, I tell myself that this type of sticky discomfort is an aberration, that’ll it’ll cool down again a good bit until August when it’s ‘allowed’ to be really awful. After all, some trees are still flowering and some lawns are still a little fuzzy around the edges where they’ve been reseeded after an encounter with an errant snowplow.
But around mid-June though, I start eyeing my little fan with a heavy heart. This fan is my friend. It has cooled me summer after steamy summer, in 5th floor Manhattan walk-ups and 3rd floor attics. I have proudly extolled its virtues to others whose mouths hang agape when I tell them I don’t have A/C.
“No really, all I need is my little fan – just gotta keep the air circulating and everything’s great. What’s REALLY uncomfortable is going from an air-conditioned bedroom to a hot living room... It’s really BAD for you actually. Best to just deal with summer and drink ice water, if you ask me.”
But... but maybe just for the really hot nights. Like the one last summer when I came close to a psychotic break and I went into lab at 2:30 a.m., just to get out of the heat. Maybe just for those nights I could flip on a modest, say 10,000 BTU, window mounted A/C. Just so I could get some sleep...
Ack! No! I can’t desert my little fan. I already hear pleading, pitiful voices from Isabelle, my old iPod that’s been relegated to a box of electrical miscellanea next to my stereo. But oh, Ruby (my new iPod) is so small and light... and the battery lasts so long... and it doesn’t skip when I run up hills and leave me stranded for inspiration just when I need them most.
Maybe just a 5,000 BTU...
No!! I only have one more summer left, I can tough it out, even if the dripping condensation from my glass of ice water does ultimately ruin my wooden nightstand. Yes, one more summer than I’ll be tucked back under the cool summer blanket of Bay Area fog. (Or at least that’s the plan...I can hear your grumbling, So. Quit it.)
I’ll just go to lab - where it’s 72 degrees, 365 days of the year. I have enough research to do to last me for many hot nights, and it’s really bad, there’s always the cold room. Mmm... nothing like a few minutes at 40F in a t-shirt to cool down the core body temperature.
Lab is probably where I belong, anyhow, now that the wild and wacky days of thesis writing, thesis editing, thesis printing and thesis defending or behind me. Back in March, at Shira and Uri’s 3rd Annual, epic Purim extravaganza, I could not imagine what this moment would feel like. I was so deep in the thesis cave, I was certain that I’d be working on Figure 64 and formatting the literature references well into the ’08 presidential race.
So in keeping with the Purim party decree – to come dressed as something you are not, and to drink until you can’t tell good from evil – I donned a hand-made ‘thought bubble’ that read, simply, ‘MY THESIS.’ It was a little abstract, I’ll grant you. Most people define themselves as not being some noun or adjective. Per usual, I zigged when everyone else zagged and I chose to not be a verb, (“I am NOT thinking about MY THESIS.”).
However, as the night progressed and my fellow diligent Purim partygoers started to have difficulty with subtle costumes, I also came to appreciate a more literal interpretation of my get-up:
“Ha ha!! I get it! YOU ARE NOT YOUR THESIS! Like, you’re a PERSON... not some document... Oh that’s sooooo jaded 6th year grad student of you! I HAVE to take a picture of you for a friend of mine who’s, like, in his 12th year at Penn...”
A 12th year of grad school. Yikes. That’s even scarier than a summer without A/C.
I dig to the bottom of the shoe pile for flip flops and I wedge wool sweaters, scarves, hats and gloves back into their bin in the closet.
I roll up my down comforter and unfold the thin blanket that will spend most summer nights angrily kicked to the floor at the foot of my bed.
I get out a dish towel and re-mummify my fruit bowl against the inevitable onslaught of fruit flies that will arrive on or inside Stop & Shop produce.
And finally, I take down the small fan that has spent the winter atop a high shelf, prop it against the screen of my now permanently open bedroom window and switch it to the lowest (and quietest) setting. With the exception of a few torrential thunderstorms when the windows must be shut, this little fan will spin steadily until about the 1st of October.
I feel rather pleased with myself after completing this little ritual, like I’ve managed to preemptively defeat the coming Summer Oven of New England with a minimalist tool set worthy of MacGyver. I entertain a certain self righteous satisfaction that, unlike the carbon foot printing monsters up and down the street, I have not run out and bought yet another 40,000 BTU air conditioner unit. And the sturdiness of my moral fiber relative to those Central Air people... well... I think it goes without saying...
Then June happens. At the beginning, I tell myself that this type of sticky discomfort is an aberration, that’ll it’ll cool down again a good bit until August when it’s ‘allowed’ to be really awful. After all, some trees are still flowering and some lawns are still a little fuzzy around the edges where they’ve been reseeded after an encounter with an errant snowplow.
But around mid-June though, I start eyeing my little fan with a heavy heart. This fan is my friend. It has cooled me summer after steamy summer, in 5th floor Manhattan walk-ups and 3rd floor attics. I have proudly extolled its virtues to others whose mouths hang agape when I tell them I don’t have A/C.
“No really, all I need is my little fan – just gotta keep the air circulating and everything’s great. What’s REALLY uncomfortable is going from an air-conditioned bedroom to a hot living room... It’s really BAD for you actually. Best to just deal with summer and drink ice water, if you ask me.”
But... but maybe just for the really hot nights. Like the one last summer when I came close to a psychotic break and I went into lab at 2:30 a.m., just to get out of the heat. Maybe just for those nights I could flip on a modest, say 10,000 BTU, window mounted A/C. Just so I could get some sleep...
Ack! No! I can’t desert my little fan. I already hear pleading, pitiful voices from Isabelle, my old iPod that’s been relegated to a box of electrical miscellanea next to my stereo. But oh, Ruby (my new iPod) is so small and light... and the battery lasts so long... and it doesn’t skip when I run up hills and leave me stranded for inspiration just when I need them most.
Maybe just a 5,000 BTU...
No!! I only have one more summer left, I can tough it out, even if the dripping condensation from my glass of ice water does ultimately ruin my wooden nightstand. Yes, one more summer than I’ll be tucked back under the cool summer blanket of Bay Area fog. (Or at least that’s the plan...I can hear your grumbling, So. Quit it.)
I’ll just go to lab - where it’s 72 degrees, 365 days of the year. I have enough research to do to last me for many hot nights, and it’s really bad, there’s always the cold room. Mmm... nothing like a few minutes at 40F in a t-shirt to cool down the core body temperature.
Lab is probably where I belong, anyhow, now that the wild and wacky days of thesis writing, thesis editing, thesis printing and thesis defending or behind me. Back in March, at Shira and Uri’s 3rd Annual, epic Purim extravaganza, I could not imagine what this moment would feel like. I was so deep in the thesis cave, I was certain that I’d be working on Figure 64 and formatting the literature references well into the ’08 presidential race.
So in keeping with the Purim party decree – to come dressed as something you are not, and to drink until you can’t tell good from evil – I donned a hand-made ‘thought bubble’ that read, simply, ‘MY THESIS.’ It was a little abstract, I’ll grant you. Most people define themselves as not being some noun or adjective. Per usual, I zigged when everyone else zagged and I chose to not be a verb, (“I am NOT thinking about MY THESIS.”).
However, as the night progressed and my fellow diligent Purim partygoers started to have difficulty with subtle costumes, I also came to appreciate a more literal interpretation of my get-up:
“Ha ha!! I get it! YOU ARE NOT YOUR THESIS! Like, you’re a PERSON... not some document... Oh that’s sooooo jaded 6th year grad student of you! I HAVE to take a picture of you for a friend of mine who’s, like, in his 12th year at Penn...”
A 12th year of grad school. Yikes. That’s even scarier than a summer without A/C.
posted by Eva Marie at 9:45 AM
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