The Shared Dwelling of Hades and Poseidon
And no, I don’t mean anywhere near Mt. Olympus. Unless that was somehow moved to my apartment without my noticing. Which wouldn’t surprise me much. Anyway.
Monday afternoon, the air conditioner in my apartment went kaput. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. The AC unit itself is fine. Nothing wrong with it. But the outlet it was plugged into? Well…that’s another story, the beginnings of which go back to about three or four weeks ago. About once or twice a day, the AC unit would strain greatly, then turn off. Or the breaker would trip, thus cutting its power. One day, I turned it on, and was greeted with sparks coming from the plug. At one point, I’d thought this was going to be a horrible problem, but I kept getting the AC to work by poking the plug with an umbrella, trying to rearrange it a little to get the connection going. After some sparks, it usually would. Monday evening, not so much. Part of the wire that feeds the power into the outlet was burnt so bad it just fell off at a mere touch. And the bracket that holds the right part of the plug (as opposed to the left) was broken off. So there’s no way for a mere amateur like myself to fix this. Damn. I slept not even three hours in the horrid heat Monday night. Tuesday after work, I went to Best Buy and bought a portable AC unit.
Why not tell the landlady? Easy. She’s never here when I am. I leave for work, she’s not here. I come home from work, she’s gone. Not to mention how slow it is getting things done around this place. I’ve been waiting over a month for a key to my mailbox. That’s right. I can’t even check my own mail. Pathetic. I bring it up every time I see her, and she keeps promising me she’ll find out if the lock has been changed or not. Still I hear nothing. But back to the saga…
The portable AC unit was a floor model, and cost me $450. As in, about three weeks of work, depending on hours. I got it home and was fired up. Finally, no more basting. After figuring out the exhaust disposal system (a sliding trap door that goes into a window, with a plastic slinky-type tube attached into to blow the exhaust out), I plugged it in and prepared to bask in the glory of cold air (the thermometer on the AC unit said it was 92 in my apartment, by the way). After about 30 seconds, the breaker tripped. Which meant no plugging it into the living room. Ugh. It only puts out 10,000 BTU’s, or less than half the main unit in here does. Meaning, there was no way this thing was going to cool both rooms. I’d hoped to just take it back and forth based on which room I was in. But nevermind that now. So I brought it in here to the bedroom and got it all hooked up and running. I left it alone for about an hour and came back to check the progress…only to find the floor soaked. Apparantly the drain plug was missing, and I didn’t have it amongst any of the stuff given to me. Fan-fucking-tastic. So now, not only is it hot as fucking hell, it’s wet, too.
Before I went to bed, I tried to rig it where the drain would drip into a bowl. I had to lean it and stuff a towel under one side just to be able to fit the bowl under it. I pointed it right at my bed, and went to sleep. When I woke up, it was only slightly cooler in here (a drop from about 82 to 77), and there was dampness in the entire area surrounding the AC unt. So apparantly propping it up makes the water leak out the side (though there’s no place for this to happen that I can see) instead of out the draining tube. Not caring, I left it running while I was at work, and it didn’t do shit to cool this place while I was gone. It was 88 in the bed room when I got home. Probably more like 95 in the living room, and 120 in the bathroom (all I have to do to drip sweat, literally drip sweat, is stay in the bathroom for more than five minutes…totally ridiculous). Not to mention the near puddle in the middle of the floor.
The main problem with this piece of shit is that it puts out about as much heat as cool. The exhaust traveling through the slinky-pipe is scalding. Like, feels as though it could start a damn fire scalding. So really, I guess what I’m saying here is that I bought a $450 headache. It’s gonna get taken back, without a doubt. Fucking hot outside or not, there’s other places I can stay while waiting for the main AC unit to be running again.
The bright side: I bet I’ve lost five to ten pounds while just sitting on my ass because I’m sweating so much.
The dark side: I wrote all these damn words about just this one thing.
Now Playing in Dave’s Mental Jukebox: "Metalingus" by Alter Bridge, "Wait" by Earshot, and "Flinch" by Alanis
Football season officially starts on Friday night as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers come calling to Nashville to take on the Titans. Oh, I’m so overjoyed at this. It feels like forever ago that football season ended. Preseason game or not, I’m going to be going nuts at the stadium Friday night. This also means fall can’t be far behind, which I love because it means summer is over. Fucking hate summer, I do. As if you didn’t already know that.
Somehow my mom thinks I got my diehard stubbornness from someone besides her. She’s just as stubborn as anyone I know. I won’t claim she’s the entire source of it for me, but she’s a big part of it. My dad, his parents, and my mom’s parents all contributed. We’re all varying degrees of mules, me, being the product of all this cross-breeding of stubborn people, being the worst of the bunch.
I’m getting pissed off at the people I work with. Most of ’em don’t do shit. At all. Wednesdays are always my day to work the opening shift alone. Usually something like 9-3 or 9-4. Working alone in a stockroom isn’t always too easy, especially considering our five minute time limit on Merch Pickups. Get three smartasses scanning their reciepts in a line and you’re pretty much screwed. But anyway, this morning I walked in and everything looked just like it did when I left at three yesterday. Exactly the same…well, except in some areas where it was worse. And there were THREE people working until close last night. So for six hours, three guys didn’t do a god damn thing. I didn’t get much of my own stuff done today because I had to do all their shit, too. Now I know why I’m trying to get out of there so damn bad. Shit hole.
I guess I should cut the rant off right about here. It’s almost one in the a.m. and I got work again in the morning. Not to mention I should go check the size of the lake the portable AC has made while my back was turned to it.
Sayonara.