June 18th, 2007 - No AC yet
Sorry for not posting much lately. Usually, summer is pretty quiet and I have plenty of time for everything I do. But this summer, I’m co-teaching two courses and preparing for them took a LOT of time plus actually teaching them takes time as well. It’s on top of my full time job. We have a shortened summer semester so it feels like twice s much work to teach a course than during the school year. One class meets every morning, 4 hours, this week, and the other one meets Tuesday evenings for 3 hours. Plus both of them are hybrid and half the course contact hours are online. So that’s at least another 3 hours online each week. And it’s a research methods course, with an 18-36 page paper due at the end that we have to grade! Not to mention commenting on the various drafts during the next month. Since I haven’t taken a RM course for 10 years and have never taught it before, there’s a lot of prep work on my part.
Frugally speaking, the work on this course will lead to my teaching this course on my own in the future, perhaps once a year. The extra money will be welcome for extra pocket money and projects around the house. This summer’s money will pay for the snowblower and for the trip (and necessities) for Michael and Ann Marie’s wedding (gas alone will cost over $600 we figure, tolls another $100 (not counting any on the way to/from parents to MA), $200 for someone to house/petsit, $500 for suit and dress (already got Maggie’s at a garage sale cheap but she’ll need dress shoes and a sweater still), hotels, food, spending money, etc. It really adds up.). And we’re going to give ourselves $50 each spending money, as this is taking away a lot of my time with Maggie so Eric has to do things like work 8-7 on Tuesdays and I never see her except when she’s sleeping, etc.
Anyway, on to the topic of this post: we haven’t turned on the AC yet. It’s been in the high 80s this week and normally, the AC would have been on weeks ago. But once we got started, pulling in breezes with our new windows, being able to make it one more day w/o it, Eric got excited and wanted to see if we could last until July. It’s like our wintertime trying to make it till November w/o turning on the heat (and we live in WI, remember, so this isn’t easy!). Over the weekend, we bought 4 small box fans to help out on this quest. Couldn’t find what we really wanted: We have one old fan Eric’s had for decades that is as large as the window opening and has a thermostat on it (it modifies the fan speed depending on the temperature). The only thing with thermostats was a short and wide window fan that cost over $30 and can only be used in a window. So we got cheap ($13 each) fans with just a 3-speed control at Fleet Farm. Oh, what a difference it has made. 1) Maggie always woke up from naps and in the morning drenched in sweat. She hasn’t since the fan’s been in her room. 2) We put two in the den (computer room) which has cooled off that room as well as given the person sitting there a breeze, and it’s just barely enough to waft into the living room as well and help there. This morning, after turning it on, the temp in the LR dropped one degree in under an hour. The extra fan is for the guest room, although we are currently using it in our room as it’s quieter than the old one. We have to decide if we prefer the thermostat or the quiet.
And as to how hot it’s been, even at night? I HATE having fans blow on me. Usually, the fan i nthe bedroom isn’t turned on till Eric goes to bed so as to not bother me much. The last two nights, I had it turned on when I went to bed! And I wanted it turned towards the bed.
The fans do not seem to have changed our daily usage of electricty or only slightly. I’ve been writing down our daily numbers each morning so that I can compare things like leaving the computer on all night or what a difference the AC will make.