The Tale of the Air Conditioner

Well, the weekend proved to be eventful just like the last two. First off, as some of you might now, I've been battling a great war with the air conditioning in my apartment. I am happy to say that it seems to be working now, but I'll get to that later.

Friday - The new marketing intern started. Apparently she worked with BaB a lot at one of their big money Cali stores. They stuck her in the sweat shop to organize wheelz which means I stay at my desk and do design work. That's right. I left at 5 sharp for the first time in the two weeks that I've been at RZ. I'm always afraid to leave right at 5 because it seems like no one around me ever does. I don't want to be that intern guy that just dips out. Other people were leaving and it was a Friday so I said whatever and bolted. I guess since I thought it would be a good idea to leave "early," God punished me with heavy traffic. I'd never seen traffic to this extreme on the highway I use. I literally went through a playlist of 12 songs before I got to my street exit. I ended up getting to the apt at about the same time that I always do. So much for that.

Ok, so since about ten days ago, I've noticed that the air conditioner wouldn't hold a temperature in the apt. Everyday, it would get warmer and warmer with no hint of a/c compensation. Bad news. Starting at about wednesday, the a/c control stopped working. It would default at a blazing 85 degrees and every time I changed it back it would default again in about an hour. Needless to say this aggravated me greatly, especially when I get back to the apt after work and experience 78 degrees. Sure, not too bad, but it gets worse. So Thursday night rolls around and I'm chillin with Ben (he got in this weekend to start his summer classes, so I have a dude bro to chill with) at the apt and the temperature keeps climbing and climbing. It's at the point where we are sitting there playing Tiger Woods on XBOX and we're almost sweating as if we were actually outside playing. It got up to 82 degrees in the apt at 10pm. If I recall, it was listed as the same temperature outside at that time.

I will take this time to remind you that I have absolutely no patience for things that do not work the way they are supposed to. If an air conditioning unit is blowing air 24/7 and the temperature still exceeds 80 degrees indoors, I reserve the right to curse at it aggressively, and that I did. Friday I called the apt office and put in a work order for guys to work on it. They were there working when I got home on Friday. After about 20 minutes of them farting around, one of the guys explains what they did and tells me how to program the thermostat. The thing is really stupid and has you program temps that you want for morning, afternoon, evening, etc. WTF? Why don't you try this - I set what temp I want and you just effing do it. Don't make me program different temps for different parts of the day. Pointless.

The number on the left represents the current temperature. The number on the right represents the temp I set. I put it on 66 as part of the maintenance guy's recommendations, a full 16 degree difference with the ambient air temperature.

Anyway, so after they left I thought everything was going to be good. They fixed the a/c and the temp should start coming down and at least be at a comfortable level by the time I wake up in the morning. Wrong. I was way to optimistic. Instead, it stayed hot all night (right at about 80). It's not very nice laying in bed with no sheets over your body when you're a sheets-over-body kinda sleeper. This was getting old fast. It was so stupid at that point that Ben and I just wanted to be in an a/c environment. So, we chilled in a Borders bookstore for about 2.5 hours. It was actually pretty awesome, I caught up on some magazines and even bought three for some design inspiration. Ben read up on what to do to get into law school. Good times.

Sunday - Woke up in a sweat just like the last few days. Eff. This is gay. I promptly left a strong voicemail on the apt office's number. Within an hour the maintenance guy was back and working on the unit outside. He told me he loaded 2.5lbs of freon into the unit. Freon = results. Within an hour the apt went down a degree. Progress. Right now, as I type this, it is a cool and comfortable 76 degrees. Still a bit warm for some, but it feels like bliss to me.

I have a new appreciation for the American ideal. Within the same week I had cell phone service and air conditioning taken from my comfortable existence. There are many in the world that survive with neither, but since I was raised knowing these luxuries it was particularly hard when they were taken away. So, the moral of the story is not to take anything for granted.

Needless to say all this heat has left me extremely lethargic. Here comes another week...