Industry Figure Tom Chappell

…so the air conditioner failed on Saturday, and Sylvia and I had an absolutely horrific weekend — so hot, and so humid.

I’ve never seen the cats flatter — stretched out for maximum surface area. Our fluffy cat, “Bitey” (possibly the smartest of the lot, and certainly the fluffiest) quickly learned to hang out in the bathroom exclusively…all that cooling tile. It was kind of funny, every time we wanted to use the bathroom, to find her there, stretched out on the tile.

Still, she was perhaps the only thing in the house that was more miserable than her owners. We tried opening a few windows at night, but couldn’t leave the doors open because our front screen door is down, awaiting delivery of its replacement, and the house has so much thermal mass that it doesn’t end up cooling off until about 5:00am. Bitey, at least, had the advantage of literally being able to sleep in the window.

I had left a message with the folks who had serviced our A/C a year ago, but when I called them back at opening time, 08:00am this morning, they told me that they still had jobs left over from Friday, and they couldn’t promise me anyone before tomorrow morning at 08:00am. So I had them pencil me in, and set about looking for another outfit to call.

Several of the places that I called just answered the phone with “Hello?” You’d think that beggars wouldn’t be choosers, but I want just a little more professionalism than that.

I ended up calling Mountain Electric, who wanted a $75 diagnostic fee for coming out, which they would refund if the work was ordered. This actually sounded reasonable to me, and the flip side of that policy was that they could be here today! All righty, then. Cancel the first guys. The mountain men showed up at 4:30pm, went up on the roof, and came back down directly, having diagnosed a failed motor of some description — $575 to replace.

We gave them the go-ahead, and after about 2 hours total, they were done. Call it four man-hours, plus the cost of the part. I’m satisfied with the price.

One interesting thing was that they brought a large patio umbrella up on the roof with them, so that they wouldn’t have to be working in the blazing sun all day — brilliant.

And the house is cooling down! Sweet, merciful Jesus.