Mother’s Day Roast

Even casual visitors of this site probably know the following three things:

01. I collect lots of things.
02. I am into computers and computer security.
03. Twice a year, the HVAC unit in our house breaks down.

Friday night our house started to warm up. With our first bout of 90 degree weather, it was about time for our A/C to break. And like clockwork, it did. After trying all our normal voodoo tricks like resetting the thermostat and turning the breaker off and on, we assumed things were fixed and went to bed.

Saturday morning, we went to Onion Burger Day in El Reno. Although we enjoyed the car show, it was hotter this year than usual. (Note: Pretty much no matter what the weather is outside, I will complain about it. This is less about having bad weather, and more about me not wanting to be outside.) It was hot enough that those of us who didn’t put on sunscreen (me) got sunburned. After almost three hours of walking around El Reno in 90 degree heat, we came home to a 90 degree house.

Fudge. Melted fudge, at that.

An hour later, Susan took Mason to a birthday party and I literally melted into a puddle. When Susan came home she found a puddle of Rob in the living room floor. A few box fans arranged in a semi-circle a’la Fanhenge eventually cooled the living room down enough for us to watch the Thunder blow a sixteen-point lead and lose spectacularly to Memphis in game three of the finals.

We ramped up our troubleshooting efforts by cleaning both the inside and outside A/C filters. Using my meter I eventually tracked the air conditioning down to a blown fuse outside the house. Susan zoomed to Lowe’s to pick up two replacement fuses, and within 30 minutes we had blown both of those too. Saturday evening Susan and the kids slept in the living room in front of a wall of box fans, while I snoozed comfortably in my bed in a pool of my own sweat.

Our broken A/C ruined our Mother’s Day plans of having both my Mom and Susan’s Mom over for Mother’s Day breakfast. Making lemonade out of lemons, we decided to deliver breakfast to our moms instead. This both (a) kept our moms from having breakfast in our 80 degree abode, and (b) gave us an excuse to drive around and enjoy the van’s powerful and soothing air conditioning. We made our deliveries, had an early lunch to beat the Mother’s Day stampede, and went back home for more blistering suffering.

But wait — what to my wondering eyes should appear by Mike Penland of Ideal Heat and Air! Apparently I complained about my A/C enough on Facebook that Mrs. Penland (a friend of mine from high school) talked Mr. Penland into making a house call to look at our A/C ON MOTHER’S DAY. Within five minutes Mr. Penland had diagnosed our issue. Despite everything being closed, Mike pieced together what we had with parts he was able to get his hands on and got us up and running. Trust me, watching our thermostat drop from 85 degrees to 70 degrees was the greatest Mother’s Day gift of all time.