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Sunday, May 04, 2008

It's barely May!

I'm going to melt.

Two or three months from now, I won't show up to work. My boss will call me to find out why. I won't answer. My coworkers will become concerned, because that just isn't like me. So someone will come to my place to check on me. When no one answers the door, they will break in. They will call my name and look for me, but all they will see is a puddle. I will have gone the way of Frosty the Snowman. The sun was hot that day.

We're only three days into May, and it was 82 degrees today. With about 75% humidity. Well, during the middle of the day, anyway. It's 100% humidity right now, but fortunately, it's cooled off to about 60 degrees. My apartment is equipped with air conditioning - such as it is. I try not to use the A/C more than necessary, and it's amazing to me how hot it gets in my apartment if I don't. I haven't turned on the heat since I got here at the beginning of March. It was cold then. But I'm on the 5th floor of an 8 floor building and I guess my apartment absorbs enough heat from the surrounding apartments that I don't actually have to turn the heat on. Back then, the temperature gauge in my living room typically read 22-23ºC (72-74ºF) - a little warm, but I would have felt foolish using the air conditioning when it was so cold outside. So I opened my windows. But then I discovered that if I left my windows open at night, my living room floor would be covered with tiny little bugs the next day. Ewww. So now I only open it in the mornings.

Average no-A/C temperature in my apartment has risen over the last few weeks - as you might imagine. It's been hovering around 26ºC (about 79ºF) for the last couple of weeks, but as of today, it's hovering around 27ºC (about 81ºF). So that's fun. I generally just turn the A/C on when I'm really hot and shut it off when I'm comfortable. It's amazing how fast the temperature rises again, though. Especially when it's already warmer inside than it is outside. I usually turn the A/C off at around 25ºC (about 77ºF), but even at night, it doesn't take long for the temperature to shoot back up.

I'm also mildly concerned about the functionality of my A/C. My system is one of those little one-room jobbies that is mounted on my wall. My concern is that although the display may tell me that we're shooting for a temperature of 18ºC, the air coming out of the machine is only slightly colder than room temperature. So I'm wondering - if it gets up to 90ºF in my apartment, and I turn on the AC - will I have 88ºF air "cooling" the room? Hmm.. maybe I should make some inquiries.

P.S. I realize that the listing of temperatures and going back and forth between different units of measurement may seem a bit excessive and ridiculous. But everything is listed in Celsius here and I (as well as most of you) need to convert the temperatures to Fahrenheit in order to have a better grasp on their significance. So why didn't I just simplify things and omit the Celsius temperatures? For the sake of accuracy - I'm a little OCD. In order to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit, you must multiply by 9/5 and add 32. So 26ºC (which I translated to "about 79ºF" above), is actually 78.8ºF. So if I round the temperature in Fahrenheit and don't give you the Celsius temperature with it, it seems inaccurate to me. Yes, I do know how ridiculous this sounds. But I admitted that I'm OCD, so back off.