[ed. Fair warning: I was in a very weird mood when I wrote this, or possibly having a heat stroke. Read with caution.]

Ahh summertime in Texas. Huddling in our homes, curtains drawn to keep out the burning light of day, basking in the cool breeze from our air conditioners, and praying our lawns do not spontaneously combust. Good times.

That is, until your AC can’t keep up with the hundred-n-somethin’ oven outside.

When Tammy and I bought our wonderful home, we knew that the AC was old and perhaps past its prime. We told ourselves, “No matter! For we shall save our pennies and dimes that on that fateful day when the system succumbs to the sweet here-after, we shall easily purchase a new one!” (For some reason, my more naive memories always have Elizabethan accents.)

If you saw my last WFHF video, you know how all that penny and dime saving has been going this year. Yyyyyyeah. So, anyway.

Last Friday (This Friday? This last Friday?? The Friday that was before today last time happened???), we noticed that it was strangely warm as we huddled in our home (see first paragraph for further description). The thermostat said 72, but the thermometer said 80. Well, that can’t be good. Being the manly man of the house that I am, I ventured outside (risking my life in the full heat of the late evening) and found the loud-noise-box-thing wasn’t making it’s customary loud noise that cools the house. After giving it a manly kick that didn’t fix it, I knew I needed help.

Thankfully, we have a friend from church who works on loud-noise-box-things-that-cool-your-house. He came by and found that a part had overheated. (What? In this weather?? Noooo.) He looked through the similar parts rolling around in the back of his truck, but could not find an exact match. Instead (and I’m not making this up), he found two smaller parts and some extra wire and made the part we needed. So where we used to have a 60 amp thingy, we now have a 25 amp thingy wired to a 35 amp thingy wired to where the busted thingy once was. Seriously.

It’s working so far, but the above mentioned friend did have a hard conversation with me. The kind of conversation that usually leaves you looking at your bank account balance and quietly weeping. Basically, our air conditioner is living in hospice care. We’re doing what we can to keep it comfortable and quietly making arrangements for its ultimate demise. And you think funerals are expensive! You should see the estimate for a new AC!!

And so we are taking measures to try and squeeze another couple of months our of our hospice care AC. For instance, on Saturday, we turned the thermostat up to 80, making the house very uncomfortable for us, but much more comfortable for our poor AC unit. Then, we spent the entire day away from the sauna that would normally be our house and drove all over town going from free AC to free AC. Bookstores, restaurants, malls, you name it. It was actually a lot of fun. It was an adventure!

So, please be in prayer for our hospice care AC. Pray it lasts long enough that we can pay to replace it without paying the premium rate (that I feel is completely fair and well earned) for doing the replacement when it’s a hundred bazillion degrees outside and twice that in our attic (where the less-noisy-make-cold-box-part lives).

[ed. See? I told you it would be weird.]

Working from a home office certainly has its perks, but until you’ve actually done it, you may not recognize the many pitfalls. This week’s white board quip is from my full-time-work-from-home friend, Randypants to explain his … ahem … apparent distance from societal norm.

I’m often in my basement and the noise of the usual is deadened by concrete and the internet.