Desperate times call for desperate measures

Temperatures in Seattle soared to a record-breaking 103 degrees yesterday. I realize this is nothing to those who dwell in areas of the country that regularly see temps over 100 all summer long, but here in the Pacific Northwest we are just not equipped to deal with this type of weather.

After a sweltering bus ride home yesterday (only about 30% of Metro buses have air conditioning), I arrived home to find that my boyfriend had taken matters into his own hands. He was hauling a huge piece of cardboard into the living room. “I’m hooking up the air conditioner!” he proclaimed.

Let me explain. Stewart bought a fairly expensive air conditioning unit last year for his 350 square foot, fifth floor studio apartment to alleviate the feeling of living/sleeping inside an oven three months out of the year. It was amazing… no wonder I rarely saw my own bed that summer. However, when we moved into our condo we quickly realized that the glorious air conditioner did not work with our new windows. We didn’t think a lot about it at the time (it was October), packed the A/C up, and put it into storage.

Enter Seattle Heat Wave 2009. For the past few days we’ve been telling ourselves it’s not that bad. But people, it’s BAD. Even at night, it’s stayed at least 80+ degrees in our condo, making sleep (or any other entertaining bedroom activities...) virtually impossible. And when the mercury hit 103 yesterday, Stew decided he’d had enough.

We tossed aside snowboards and snowshoes in our storage unit to reveal the miraculous air conditioner, which we dragged upstairs. Then we went to work cutting cardboard into various shapes and sizes to block off a narrow strip on the side of the sliding glass door leading to our patio. For a brief second, I was embarrassed about the totally white trash version of air conditioning that we had created… then we were hit by a blast of cool air that made me weak at the knees. Sigh.

I even got enough sleep last night to get up at 5:30am this morning and jog around Green Lake before work. Previously, exercise had seemed like a total impossibility until the world returned to normal.

So yeah, it’s kind of trashy. But sitting here breathing deliciously cool 74 degree air makes it all worth it.