Hot air

On Monday, I telecommuted so I could be at home to deal with the air conditioning repair guys, who were supposed to arrive at 9 a.m.

At 8 a.m., I got a phone call saying that the delivery truck with the new condenser unit was delayed and wouldn't come until 11.

At 11:30, I got another call saying that it might be as late as 1 p.m.

At 1:15, the phone rang again: "They'll be there within 45 minutes."

At 1:50, two guys finally rolled up and got started.

At 3:30, they announced that they had to leave (WTF?!) but the company's owner, who'd done the initial estimate, would be there in about 15 minutes to finish the job.

At 5 p.m., the replacement guy called me outside and explained that everything was hooked up properly, but that mice had eaten all the wires and insulation that ran under the deck and connected the condenser to the furnace in the garage. He said he would have to come back with a crew and crawl underneath to fix all that and install a rodent-stopping screen before the system would work. So, to sum up, the air conditioning still doesn't function, the furnace is now disconnected as well (not that we need it at the moment, but really) and I can't have the repair guys back until next week, when I'm on vacation and have time to deal with them. Oh joy.

During the course of this long, long day, we also discovered that it's like freaking Wild Kingdom under the deck. In addition to the wire-and-insulation-loving mice, the first two repair guys found a possum skeleton; and when one of the guys stuck his hand into a hole in the wooden steps leading down from the deck to the condenser, a gray cat came shooting out and nearly scared us both to death. (Apparently it was using the hollow inside of the top step as a hideout. Sorry about that, cat.) Thanks to our own two cats, none of these creatures have ever entered the house proper--if you were a mouse, you'd need testicles like cannonballs to dare poke your nose out with that pair of bloodthirsty killers on the loose--but just the thought of them lurking around out there gives me the shivers. Ugh.

Mind you, we haven't had A/C for any of the three summers we've lived in this house (the old condenser was the original c. 1985 model and was already defunct when we moved in), so we're in no worse shape now than a week ago. It's just having the promise of cool air dangled in front of us and then yanked away that makes it seem worse somehow. A friend of mine suggested that when the system is finally working, we should crank the thermostat down to 55 degrees and have a party with parkas and hot chocolate. Sounds good to me.