It’s the middle of July and things finally slowed down at work.
I have been putting off taking my vacation, but time finally came.
In the northeast where I live, July is the hottest, most humid month of the year. My time off is chock full of things to get done, many of which are outside in my yard and extensive flower gardens. The first day of my vacation, I was determined to get my front garden weeded and flowers trimmed back. The sun and the heat were brutal. After a few hours I came inside to get cooled off in my central air conditioning. I was so hot and sweaty that after about ten minutes, I actually felt chilled. I had a tall glass of cold water and a snack before I went back out to transplant a few things. At the last minute I decided to turn the thermostat down two degrees, since I was so chilled from the regular temperature. Naturally it had gotten hotter outside, so I limited my time doing yard work to one hour instead of two. This time when I came inside I didn’t feel the cool air conditioned air due to my shortsightedness when I turned the thermostat down. What a mistake! I turned the settings three degrees cooler and immediately jumped in the shower while I waited for the a/c to do its work. Even after a nice tepid shower, by the time I dried off, the house still seemed warm. I remembered what my father had always told me about what an air conditioner actually does to make a house feel cool. It doesn’t actually produce cold air. Instead, it takes the hot air out of the house, pulls air over the refrigerant and coils of the air conditioner’s system, then blows the conditioned air back into the house. So when the thermostat reading seems to drop by only one or two degrees, the conditioned air actually feels cooler. I felt a bit foolish once I realized the mistake that I had made in changing the temperature settings.