052 DAMN, I'M HOT

It is June the 6^th and we are still 15 days away from the official start of summer.  But the last two days have been stiflingly hot.  It hasn’t just been the sunshine and high temperatures; it’s been the 46% humidity that completely saps your strength.  Combine that with the 33C temperature two days ago and the 32C yesterday and by the end of the day I was completely bagged.  Heck it was 22C when we started our morning walk at 8:30 AM and 25C when we returned an hour later.

Don’t get me wrong, I love sunny days, especially after the 4 solid months of rain and grey skies we endured this past winter.  The previous ten days or so was no picnic either.  There was so much rain, the plants in my hanging rail baskets couldn’t keep up.  Some are doing ok, but several of them don’t look like they are going to make it.

The problem here is that the baskets we bought have a plastic liner and there are absolutely no drainage holes.  I wanted to drill some holes in them originally, but my tools are still buried somewhere in the cavern known as my garage.  Even if I had found them, I would not have been able to use the tools anyway, as that is when my wrist was at its absolute worst.

Back to the weather though, today was a very pleasant 16C when I took Renee to the Westcoast Express at 6:00 AM and it was still 16C at 8:30 AM when I finished my physio appointment and Toby and I went for our morning walk.  That was extremely important as the cooler temperatures allowed toby to come with me to physio and wait in the truck.  Any warmer and I would have had to drive home from physio, drop Toby off and see if I could sneak away.  He does not like to be left home alone and I didn’t want him waking the neighbourhood with his howling.  Anyway, it worked out well and it is supposed to be chilly and rainy on Wednesday for my next appointment.

Sleeping last night was no picnic either.  Even lying in front of the fan blowing directly over us, the house was not cooling very fast overnight despite having all the windows open and the cooling temperatures outside.  I guess this means the house will retain its heat well in the winter months when we will be trying to heat it up.

It’s funny that this mini heat wave hit when it did as I ordered a water cooler and water deliveries last week, but it was due to arrive until today.  It did and it works and looks great.  More importantly I ordered a portable air conditioner from Sears last week but it doesn’t arrive until Wednesday.  I researched these well online and talking to people and the best rated unit is a Honeywell 14,000 BTU unit.

I searched everywhere for this unit in Canada and nobody carries it.  Not Rona, Canadian Tire, Staples, Wal-Mart, Home Depot, nobody.  I searched Amazon and they have it, but when I went to order it, I got all the way through to the payment stage when it told me it could not be shipped to my address, likely because it was in Canada.

Finally, I found the unit at Sears of all places.  There’s a Sears just up the street a bit but imagine my dismay when I discovered that they do not have the units physically in the store, but it had to be ordered online from Sears.  Well I did that and discovered it was on sale and I actually got it $150 cheaper, which is excellent.

So now I await my chance for cool air, and it will be installed in my bedroom Wednesday afternoon.  Meaning I will be having a nice cool sleep Wednesday night.  Of course, one looks at the weather forecast and it is calling for cool temperatures and rain on Wednesday.  Of course it is.  Oh well, at least I will be pre-loaded for the next mini or full on heatwave that is to come.

Most people I have talked to have told me their units are good for cooling their bedroom but not much further.  I’m hoping with this full power unit that it will cool the whole upstairs and if it works well, then I will get a second unit to cool the downstairs as well.  We shall see.  It’s important for me to be cool as I don’t tolerate heat really well.  It’s even more important to keep Toby cool.  My favourite kind of day is a bright sunny day where the temperature is below 0CF and there has been a fresh snow.  Granted we don’t see that in this area too often though.