Saturday, August 7, 2010

Comic Absurdity or, The Story of My Life

I want to start this post off by clearly stating that I really love my grandmother, who is my current roomie. She is one of those people who inspires everyone she meets to become a better person. She is kind, caring, non-judgmental, devout in her faith, accepting, giving, the list goes on and on, as those of you who know her can attest to. She really is my role model.

And I say all of the above in a non-sucking-up for what I'm about to say sorta way. She really is awesome and I know how blessed I am to have her in my life. We all are.

So with all those accolades, I do have to say she has some faults, like any human being. And I'm not going to list them online, as that would be rude. But this morning (and both summers that I have been privileged to live with her) she presents me with some questionable logic. This is, of course, regarding the air conditioner.

Now one of my grandmother's greatest strengths is that she is by no means materialistic in the slightest. She knows what really makes people happy, and knows that it is not things. Because of her non-materialism and frugality, she is great at saving. She saves money; recycles all cardboard, glass, metal, etc.; recycles used cooking oil; even saves the broth from cooking veggies to make soups. But the one thing that I cannot understand are her saving tactics when it comes to the blasted air conditioner!

First, she keeps the thermostat set on 78-80 in the summer. Might I remind everyone that I live in Dallas. That's in Texas. Where it's hot. HOT! Like, 105 degrees for days on end hot. I'll give her that she's old and has thin blood, but not all of us are! But that's the price I pay for having such an amazing, generous roomie. I'm hot ALL OF THE TIME when I'm at home. I can get past this, really. (Well, get past it with some complaining to friends and occasional trips to the thermostat before I go to bed... SHH!)

Now here's what I don't get. So please, if someone could explain this to me, it'd be great. She sometimes turns the air off of auto (again, at 78-80 degrees) to run. This means the fan constantly runs to move the air around the vents. Now, she does this to keep it cool while not turning the thermostat down so as to save money on the electric bill. This is faulty logic to me. In Jana-land, it would be more cost effective to run the actual air conditioner a bit more frequently. So here's my equation of electricity used:

24 hours of fan > less than 24 hours of air conditioner being on

I feel like that's a pretty solid equation. But what do I know about air conditioners...

Additionally, this morning she mentioned that the next time we have company, we need to close the air vents to both her room and my room so all the air goes into the part of the house that we're using. Now, this logic makes more sense to me. BUT, will it really make a difference?

Let's say that we have company for 4 hours. Will diverting the air from both of our rooms to the living areas save enough cool air so that we will not have to turn the air down from 78? No... The air will still only be cooled to 78, regardless of amount of air siphoned to other rooms. Thus, we're saving money for 4 hours b/c the air won't have to be on as long? I don't know. I can't think of an equation to help with this one.

FINALLY, as posted on FB, I have a blasted eye infection. Thus, I'm already 10% more irritable than usual. I was able to be squeezed in to the eye doc last week, and was given a joint steroid/antibiotic drop for my good 'ole eye. This directly relates to the air dilemma, just go with me. My drops need to be stored between 59-77 degrees. I CAN'T DO IT! With the thermo set at 78-80, there's no way in Hell that my house will ever reach a frigid 77 degrees. This frustrates me. There is no equation or no solution, just me whining. When storing your eye drops in your own house becomes a problem, there is ample reason for annoyment. At least now, if I go blind, we'll know why.

So that's my rant about the air conditioning. Again, if you can help clear up some of the faulty logic that I just can't wrap my head around, please help! Until then, I'll just be sweating in my room, suffering from dry eye thanks to the fan on high blowing right at my face.

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