23 July 2017

All right, so at the beginning of the month the Spouse Thingy helped me set my bike up for inside riding, because it's been too freaking hot to walk outside. I was all YAY because I could ride in my office and watch stuff on my iPad, and it was set up right where the air vent would blow on me. No heat issues! Huzzah!

So, of course, the air conditioner up and croaked. And it wasn't a gentle, replace-a-part croaking; it was a full on, have-a-memorial service-then-bury-the-damn-thing croaking. And because of the way our entire HVAC system is, it meant replacing the furnace at the same time.

Even then, it wasn't awful. It's not how we wanted to spend our money, but it was a lot less spendy than I feared it would be (thank you HGTV for making me think it might be $40,000 for both. It was not.) The only real problem was time...two weeks until everything could be installed.

Somekitty figured out where the cool air came from...

So...fine. It was too damned hot in the house to get on the bike. It was too damned hot for most things, but I was able to get a portable a/c from Home Depot, so we were able to keep the living room at about 85. Not great, but not horrible. Because of the cats, we ran it even when we weren't home, because they're senior kitties and Max, especially, is vulnerable.

Then the portable peed all over the floor and soaked the carpet, and just made me 20 kinds of cranky. Still, it worked, and once we figured out the whole a/c-peeing thing, it was good enough. Sleeping sucked big fat hairy donkey balls, because the bedroom was 92 and even a fan did no good.

I whined a lot.

I also spent a lot at Starbucks, because they have a/c and don't mind me sitting there with my laptop for hours on end. I got a lot of work done (editor has the first Wick After Dark book...there are some for-sure rewrites that need to be done, though) and read a few books, and drank way too much tea,

But...but...but...heat outside and heat inside meant I didn't do a lot of moving around. Yes, we have a gym membership, but really, the idea of driving all that way when it's this hot was more of a pain in the ass idea than anything.

Then the a/c was replaced this week, and we have cold air again (and more efficient...places in this house that were always hot now are not, so, yay) which means the bike will be used.

In fact, I used it last night. And discovered the seat is really hard (really, my asterisk is just too delicate). And then discovered the iPad I want to use to watch stuff while I pedal away doesn't have a volume setting loud enough for me to hear over the sound of the tire spinning. And THEN discovered the Bluetooth on it doesn't work anymore, so my earbuds wouldn't connect.

I said a lot of HBO words.

Still, we have air, I have bike, all is good.

Next up:

We are not waiting for it to croak. It's as old as the a/c was (went in when the house was built) and since Dixon has horrible water, we're getting it done soon. Probably a week or so from now. And if a new water heater proves to have the same increased efficiency as the a/c, we'll probably kick ourselves for not doing it sooner, since we can't get really hot water in the kitchen.

If anything else goes wrong...surely there's a celebrity out there who will draw attention to the Wick Chronicles and pimp if out, right???

Or maybe Wick After Dark will hit it big. Bouncy things sell well...I hope.