Dealing with the heat
1 year: 2 months
2 months: 4 weeks: 1 day
Woodstock is 255 days old
Today, like yesterday, was a “heat advisory” day and I was here, in Evanston with no AC. Today differed from yesterday that I needed to pick up my food (which I intentionally left behind at my father’s house yesterday) from my mother’s office. Due to the heat I decided against my usual course (walking the route of the Evanston L) and opted for taking the L itself from Main to Central. In an unusual twist, the Evanston Expresses heading south seemed to be quite empty yet the one I boarded heading north was standing room only. At Central I (of course) took a picture of the platform and then picked up my food from my mother’s office which is adjacent to the station. When I returned to the Central Street station I noticed that the CA was nowhere to be seen and the gate was wide open. I could have taken pictures of the interior of the station house (since my presence at a station when a CA would not be in the frame is rare) yet, for some reason, I did not. And since the gate was left open and unattended, I could have walked up to the platform without paying, yet I went through the turnstile anyway. At platform level I took one more shot.
I was lucky enough to end up catching a train back with the last two cars being 2600 series cars. I stood in the very rear of the last car and took one photo of the Noyes platform as we sped away before I ran out of film.
Following the “food run” my activities for the day were limited (as planned). Electrical use (as it was yesterday) was also limited. “One appliance in use at a time” was my self imposed and enforced rule to reduce power consumption and unnecessary heat generation. The refrigerator/freezer was exempt from this rule as was the air conditioner. Actually, it wasn’t the air conditioner exactly. It was the fan inside the air conditioner. Yesterday I tried the thing and, amazingly, it didn’t blow up or short out the electricity in the house or simply do nothing. It came to life. So that particular device was on most of the day.
Survival in such circumstances necessitated the loss of clothes (I spent and am spending the day naked) and the consumption of much water (all of it sufficiently chilled in the freezer). Motionless was the ideal state for the day, though that proved, and still proves, to be quite difficult. Yet I did manage to take a nap for about an hour and I awoke with no ill effects. (The usual extraordinary headache that accompanies my naps did not occur.) However, when I woke I was still quite hot despite all of the afore mentioned cooling actions. Lying motionless for a nap did however cool me some (I was not sweating quite as much).
Resorting to desperation I tried the air conditioner and managed to get it to operate. The beast is quite temperamental and refuses to work most times or will simply fail when it is most needed. However, today it came to life for me. The fan in the air conditioner was exempt from the one appliance rule but the air conditioner was not. As a result, I had to turn the computer off to turn the air conditioner on. (Though the air conditioner and computer are both on right now… oops!)
My plan was to have the air conditioner on (set to its lowest power capacity “QUIET COOL FRESH AIR”) for one hour. In that time the temperature in the living room dropped drastically-not to a “good temperature” but to one that was more tolerable and that would put me in far less danger of dehydration. It was actually cool enough that I decided to risk heating water on the stove top (my plumbing is not in order) to wash dishes. In the event that I got too hot from the heated water I would go sit in front of the air conditioner with the afore mentioned cup of freezer chilled water to cool myself down. After washing out the pot that I was to use to boil the water to wash the dishes (it was last used to boil eggs and was itself not clean) the air conditioner started thrumming and making increasingly frequent ticking noises, both of which were quite alarming. I decided to cut back the air conditioning time from one hour to forty five minutes to stay on the safe side.
However by 4:28 (I started the air conditioner at 4:00 sharp) it became apparent that I could leave the air conditioner on no longer. The frequent ticks were becoming more numerous and were going off with greater intensity. The humming became louder and the only thing my mind could directly associate with the sound was running electrical current. Running electrical current in something under great strain. To make matters worse, the sound seemed to be emanating from the whole house. I shut the air conditioner off immediately. It was only on for twenty eight minutes, less than half of the originally planned run time.
The fan inside the unit I left on ("FRESH AIR CIRCULATE") as it had been operating all day without incident. The air conditioner wound down (with a series of even louder and far more annoying clicks that lasted for a few minutes before finally fading out) while the fan blew on. In the twenty eight minutes of cooler air I did at least manage to wash out the pot though I didn’t get to the dishes. After I let the unit sit for a while I turned it back on (still within the four o’clock hour) and continued my task of dish washing. I was now able to enjoy a snack that I could not yesterday: Apple Jacks with cold milk.
After that session the heat of the day had passed and now the temperature has dropped down to more livable standards (the upper nineties). Tomorrow is supposed to be much cooler (i.e. standard Chicago summer temperatures) and the sounds of what appears to be an oncoming storm force me to believe such predictions.
And I end this entry with a standard, if unusually warm, period.
2 months: 4 weeks: 1 day
Woodstock is 255 days old
Today, like yesterday, was a “heat advisory” day and I was here, in Evanston with no AC. Today differed from yesterday that I needed to pick up my food (which I intentionally left behind at my father’s house yesterday) from my mother’s office. Due to the heat I decided against my usual course (walking the route of the Evanston L) and opted for taking the L itself from Main to Central. In an unusual twist, the Evanston Expresses heading south seemed to be quite empty yet the one I boarded heading north was standing room only. At Central I (of course) took a picture of the platform and then picked up my food from my mother’s office which is adjacent to the station. When I returned to the Central Street station I noticed that the CA was nowhere to be seen and the gate was wide open. I could have taken pictures of the interior of the station house (since my presence at a station when a CA would not be in the frame is rare) yet, for some reason, I did not. And since the gate was left open and unattended, I could have walked up to the platform without paying, yet I went through the turnstile anyway. At platform level I took one more shot.
I was lucky enough to end up catching a train back with the last two cars being 2600 series cars. I stood in the very rear of the last car and took one photo of the Noyes platform as we sped away before I ran out of film.
Following the “food run” my activities for the day were limited (as planned). Electrical use (as it was yesterday) was also limited. “One appliance in use at a time” was my self imposed and enforced rule to reduce power consumption and unnecessary heat generation. The refrigerator/freezer was exempt from this rule as was the air conditioner. Actually, it wasn’t the air conditioner exactly. It was the fan inside the air conditioner. Yesterday I tried the thing and, amazingly, it didn’t blow up or short out the electricity in the house or simply do nothing. It came to life. So that particular device was on most of the day.
Survival in such circumstances necessitated the loss of clothes (I spent and am spending the day naked) and the consumption of much water (all of it sufficiently chilled in the freezer). Motionless was the ideal state for the day, though that proved, and still proves, to be quite difficult. Yet I did manage to take a nap for about an hour and I awoke with no ill effects. (The usual extraordinary headache that accompanies my naps did not occur.) However, when I woke I was still quite hot despite all of the afore mentioned cooling actions. Lying motionless for a nap did however cool me some (I was not sweating quite as much).
Resorting to desperation I tried the air conditioner and managed to get it to operate. The beast is quite temperamental and refuses to work most times or will simply fail when it is most needed. However, today it came to life for me. The fan in the air conditioner was exempt from the one appliance rule but the air conditioner was not. As a result, I had to turn the computer off to turn the air conditioner on. (Though the air conditioner and computer are both on right now… oops!)
My plan was to have the air conditioner on (set to its lowest power capacity “QUIET COOL FRESH AIR”) for one hour. In that time the temperature in the living room dropped drastically-not to a “good temperature” but to one that was more tolerable and that would put me in far less danger of dehydration. It was actually cool enough that I decided to risk heating water on the stove top (my plumbing is not in order) to wash dishes. In the event that I got too hot from the heated water I would go sit in front of the air conditioner with the afore mentioned cup of freezer chilled water to cool myself down. After washing out the pot that I was to use to boil the water to wash the dishes (it was last used to boil eggs and was itself not clean) the air conditioner started thrumming and making increasingly frequent ticking noises, both of which were quite alarming. I decided to cut back the air conditioning time from one hour to forty five minutes to stay on the safe side.
However by 4:28 (I started the air conditioner at 4:00 sharp) it became apparent that I could leave the air conditioner on no longer. The frequent ticks were becoming more numerous and were going off with greater intensity. The humming became louder and the only thing my mind could directly associate with the sound was running electrical current. Running electrical current in something under great strain. To make matters worse, the sound seemed to be emanating from the whole house. I shut the air conditioner off immediately. It was only on for twenty eight minutes, less than half of the originally planned run time.
The fan inside the unit I left on ("FRESH AIR CIRCULATE") as it had been operating all day without incident. The air conditioner wound down (with a series of even louder and far more annoying clicks that lasted for a few minutes before finally fading out) while the fan blew on. In the twenty eight minutes of cooler air I did at least manage to wash out the pot though I didn’t get to the dishes. After I let the unit sit for a while I turned it back on (still within the four o’clock hour) and continued my task of dish washing. I was now able to enjoy a snack that I could not yesterday: Apple Jacks with cold milk.
After that session the heat of the day had passed and now the temperature has dropped down to more livable standards (the upper nineties). Tomorrow is supposed to be much cooler (i.e. standard Chicago summer temperatures) and the sounds of what appears to be an oncoming storm force me to believe such predictions.
And I end this entry with a standard, if unusually warm, period.