Summer Update

So it's been officially summer for a week now. We've had to have the AC on, but it's not been too bad.  In the worry of summer showing up, I always forget it has some perks. The grass dies so no mowing has to happen. It gets too hot for fleas to be active, so all the drama between the cats and us over flea prevention ends. These two things alone make it almost worth the heat.

We're in a house that doesn't have central air, so we function off of a window unit. When I was a kid, my grandparents would shut the doors to all of the house besides the living room and kitchen while the AC was on. Back then, this worked fine, especially considering we tended to sleep in the living room at night anyway. The AC would stay on low all night and only be turned off in the morning. It would rest for a few hours and then be turned back on when it started to get too hot.

My roommate and I can't really afford that.  We keep it on during the day, but only after the temp has reached 95 outside.  Until that point, we're usually okay. Not happy, but okay. When we moved in, we did follow the tradition of only cooling certain rooms. The first year we lived here, that wasn't so bad.

Last year though, it just got way too hot in the rest of the house. it was 115 outside and sometimes almost 100 inside in the rooms we weren't cooling. This was causing a lot of problems, like, you know, machines starting to malfunction.

This year, we decided we wouldn't shut any of the inside doors. There are some drawbacks to this. It never gets that cool in any of the rooms and the living room only gets about 70% as cool as it would if it was the only area we were cooling.   However, even if it doesn't get cold in my bedroom, at least when I go in there, it's bearable.  I'm not gasping for breath because I feel like I'm in an oven. It's also keeping everything from screwing up and melting.  So far, the system is working pretty well.

Then again, as I said, so far summer isn't being that bad. When I walked this afternoon, there was even a little bit of a breeze on me. When I came inside, I checked the temp. It was 103, but the heat index was actually making it feel like 98. Yes, folks, it's that time of year when I view 98 as a good thing.