* * *
I bet my weekend was WAY more fun than yours. Yes way, it was TOO. For instance, did you lose your air conditioning capabilities for several hours?
No, having your power knocked out by the hurricane doesn’t count.
Friday evening while I was waiting for the pizza to arrive, I turned to Fred, who was sitting in front of his computer.
“Are you sure you turned the air up?” I asked. It’s his job on Friday afternoons, as he’s going upstairs to change into his shlubby hanging-around-the-house clothes, to turn the air up. Fridays are the days we eat whatever junk food strikes our fancy, and Friday evenings our bodies tend to run on overdrive to process all the food we’ve tossed down our throats, so we’re always hotter than usual on Fridays.
“Yeah, I did,” Fred said. “But I’ll check again.” A moment later, I heard a bemused “Huh” from the stairs.
“What?” I called.
“It’s set on 71, but the temperature is almost 80, and the air conditioning isn’t running.”
To make a long story short (too late!), due to the fact that we are lax in cleaning out the air uptake filter thingy, the air conditioning unit outside had frozen through, and we needed to turn it off for a few hours so it could thaw.
Or something like that.
By 7:30 I was on the floor with the cats, “Meh”ing bitchily and swearing that I was dyyyyyyying from heat stroke. By bedtime, I was shaking my fist at the ceiling and swearing that I would never be hot again.
At least I had the ceiling fan to make some semblance of cooling me off. Plus there’s the fact that I sleep butt-ass nekkid –
(I’ll just let you sit with the horror of that image for a moment before proceeding)
and Miz Poo didn’t even try to climb up on me and share her body heat, so I was able to fall asleep fairly quickly. Fred got up at 2:30 to exercise (yeah, I don’t know what’s up with that. He’s freakish.) and turned the air on, and an hour later I was happily bundled up under the covers with only my nose showing. And the air conditioning has worked just fine ever since.
Thank gawd. ‘Cause like I don’t LIKE to sweat and shit, Muffy!
Seriously. I don’t know how you no-air-conditioning-having motherfuckers do it. Hats off to YOU.
* * *
Then Saturday, we got up early (well, early for me. I like to sleep ’til at least 8 on Saturdays and I was up at SEVEN! ::gasp!::) and went to check out the thousands and thousands of motorcycles driving the Trail of Tears. Fred and the spud checked it out last year, but this was the first time I’d seen it myself, and words cannot express how awe-inspiring it was to see that unending stream of motorcycles coming down the road. We stood there for a good half hour or more and I don’t know if we even saw half of them.
Fred’s got pictures
here.
At one point, the spud suggested that Fred and I should buy a bike so we could ride the Trail of Tears next year. We giggled pretty hard at that.
* * *
When we got home from that, Fred went out to mow the lawn, and I sat down to back up all the important things on my computer, because it was time YET AGAIN to reformat my hard drive. This is, I believe, the third time in the past year this has needed to be done. While I was backing up my email, I realized that I smelled something. It smelled good… it smelled like marshmallows… Oh shit!
I realized I’d put sugar water for the hummingbirds on to boil FORTY-FIVE MINUTES PREVIOUSLY, and it had all boiled away. Hoping to save the very expensive pot, I ran water into it, and burned sugar splattered everywhere. I was able to save the pot (part of a Christmas gift from Fred’s parents three years ago), thank god. The house still smells faintly of burned sugar, and it’s not an unpleasant smell by any means. Covers up the dirty cat litter smell that usually permeates the air.
(Kidding on that one. You can’t smell the litter box unless you’re in the room with it)
* * *
So the rest of the day was spent reading on the couch while Fred did the reformat thing. And then I spent an hour or so fighting with Eudora, trying to reinstall my “in box” files, my “Bullshit!” files, and the like. At one point I said to Fred “FUCK THIS. I’m free. All my old email is gone, and the Bullshit! people are shit out of luck. I’m done messing with it.”
Fred said “You still have
Bullshit! tapes going around?”
Do I ever. I need to start harassing the people who have the tapes or who were last to have had the tapes one of these days.
But Fred, being the genius, figured it out and saved all my email. Thank gawd. And my computer hasn’t locked up even once since the reformat (constant locking up was what made us decide to reformat).
* * *
Sunday, after sleeping until 9 (I’m a slacker) I got up and made Fred put the hair coloring in my hair. It came out darker than I wanted – I would have said it was more a dark brown than a medium golden brown – but Fred did a kick-ass job of covering all the grays, and I know that the color will fade in the next few weeks, so I’m not going to complain.
And then last night we watched the Emmys, mostly because nothing else was on, and Fred had heard that there was going to be a tribute to John Ritter. Naturally it didn’t come on before 9, so we went to bed and taped the rest.
Is it just me, or is Gary Shandling not funny at ALL?
* * *
The sunset from our back yard Saturday night.
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Your experience with the air happened to me one time in an apartment I lived in. I didn’t even know where the filter was! It got so clogged the whole thing froze up. Ever since then I have been renegade about changing filters and keeping returns clean! Especially now where the unit belongs to me and there is no manager to call and foot the bill for repairs!
I am from Arkansas and we went through Hot Springs this weekend passing over 500 bikers. Then in Hot Springs there were well over 5,000 (I am not kidding) I did not have my camera but there was the neatest sight. It was a old pub with about 1,000 Harleys outside of it and a big ol bbq goin on in the back. Would of make a cool picture but naturally I never have the camera when I need it.
I am with ya Robyn, I cannot be hot!! It is against every fiber in my being to be so.
On a side note, I am kin to the Hiltons, seriously my great great grandmother was one.
I do not get the popularity of the girls either. Maybe this country cousin should hang out with them? They did a show for MTV about 50 miles from me.
Where is my money?
Meant to add that my great great grandmother was an heiress of the hotel Hiltons, I did not mean just because of her last name that I was kin LOL.
You are SO right, Gary Shandlin is about as funny as hitting your thumb with a hammer. Plus, what is it with the way he constantly moves his body and those yucky lips?
beautiful sunset picture!
Its funny how once you have AC, you can’t live without it. Its getting fall-like up here though, so we won’t be needing ours much longer. I won’t miss the electric bills. LOL
What a beautiful sunset! The sailors had to rejoice over that one. “Red sky in morning, sailor take warning. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight.”
Nikki and Paris Hilton are NY (or LA) socalites who are celebs by association. They are at all of the hot night spots and date all the “It” boys.
Oh yeah, their family owns the Hilton Hotel empire and they are loaded up the wazoo. I think technically they are models… but Paris is also in a reality tv show where she lives on a farm and has to do *gasp* chores! Kind of a reverse Beverly Hillbillies.
Sad that I know all this. Thankyou US magazine!
My sailor should take warning ALL the time, but that is a purty sunset.
Umm..you post a pic of everything else!!…We wanna see your hair and the job Fred did!!! 🙂
Put it up dammit!! hehe
Robyn, thank you. I am touched by your generosity. I found you in my referral logs as well as the list of donors to the Jog for the Jugs and put two and two together. Thank God it was only two and two. As those who know me well realize, more than ten and the shoes come off for purposes of counting. This morning was a gym day. You don’t want to know the evil that lurks in my gym shoes.
Robyn – I’ll put one up tomorrow if the idea stays in my head long enough. Heh.
Marn – I’m always a sucker for a good cause. 🙂
Kate – heh. Took me a minute to get that!
Chrystal – US rocks! I subscribe to it, but I’m so uninterested in those damn Hiltons that anything I read about them goes in one eye and out the other.
Yep, Elizabeth Taylor’s first husband was Nicky Hilton and he is somehow related to the brat twins. Uncle? Great-uncle? Sumpin’ like that.
I too subscribe to US Magazine (honestly, I don’t know how, it just started showing up in my mailbox) and those Hilton sluts disgust me. I had no idea one was in a reality show, though. Or that either modeled. Just shows I care.
Heheheh…I had read somewhere also where Paris Hilton was sent to a farm in Arkansas to live amongst the *common folk* and thought it would be almost as big a hoot as watching that idiot Jesica Simpson ask if there were maids for rich people, and what part of the chicken was in the Chicken of the Sea can…..
Thank God I was brought up normal and had to learn to do for myself. I mean, whatinhell are these babes gonna do if it all comes crashing down and, heaven forbid, they have to apply for a REAL job or something?? Lord, I would hate to see how ugly that could become.
Robyn, how are your eyes? All better I trust. I cried really hard about something a while back and blew out a bunch of blood vessels, too. Of course everyone at work thought I got smacked around and was just too ashamed to admit it. No one could fathom that crying and vomiting could do such damage….
Kathy
Those Hiltons- just goes to show what kind of a messed up world we live in. They don’t do anything but party and they are famous.
Get a friggin’ job, be useful to society. Put on a bra!!!! Gain a few pounds and look normal.
The Hiltons are my cousins. How dare you insult them just because they have all of the money in the world. You’re all jealous.
Pfft.
Whatever.
Robyn, I am a horrible, rotten bitch. I have a BullShit! tape. I will mail it to you, and you will once again love me!
We have a/c, but we are suffering a MUCH worse fate. A fate so horrible I am loathe to speak its name. We are *gasp* without cable internet access!
YES! I admit it. (I am so ashamed!) I am using *gasp* AOL!!!
Oh, the stigma!
Mo, I love you anyways, you fool. Besides, you were last on your list, so there’s no one else on your list waiting to get the tape, so hang on to it as long as you like. I know you watch it every night as you go to sleep…
Kate. AOL. How *could* you? ::sob::
I never even got to see a “Bullshit” tape. Hmmm…When did I sign up…a year ago?
Do you have it, Mo?! 😀
Joy, do you want me to mail the tape to you? Email me
Thanks! I’m emailing you now. 🙂
I deserve to be slapped for knowing anything at all about the Hilton sisters. Their mother is Kathy Richards, a former child star who used to be on the show “Family Affair.” The girls get their sense of style from their middle-aged mother, if the picture I saw in Us Magazine a while ago of the girls and their parents was anything to go by. No joke.