Two Days to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival and the Air Conditioning Is STILL Not On!

There has not a wisp of cold air that has come out of the air conditioning vent so far! I called the apartment office and learned that there was a "little problem" yesterday with turning on the air conditioning, and that they were still working on it.

Fortunately, the temperature outside is a bit below 60 degrees with rain, so my windows are open (still), and the fan is blowing in high levels of oak pollen.

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I talked to Lynn on the phone, and she was just pulling into the driveway at the dentist's office. I wish her the best of luck with that.

She plans to come down here tomorrow. I said I thought she'd arrive around late afternoon or early evening, and she said she hoped that she'd arrive earlier than that.

I can't wait!

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The way I'm feeling, I don't know how well I'm going to get around the Sheep and Wool Festival, but I really want to try. I'm really starting to get excited!

I have a lot to do before the fest, so you probably won't hear anything else from me before late Sunday.

Have a great weekend!

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Addition:

There will be three episodes of Eureka tonight on the SciFi Channel this evening. It starts at 7 pm here, so you might want to check your local listings early. Oh, and later on (actually tomorrow morning), the Doctor Who episode will be The Fires of Pompeii.

I'm Going to the Sheep and Wool Fest!

Like The Little Engine that Could, I keep saying that to myself over and over again. And I'm hoping desperately that it's true. 

Last night, the temperature outside started to go down. It went into the sixties outside (according to the weather people), and by 8 or 9 last night, it was at about 70, where it hovered until midnight or so. So, after an evening, all night, and most of the day (which has been cloudy, cool and rainy), the temp in my apartment is down to 80 degrees, and I've started to feel like I'm not being cooked. The air conditioning should be coming on at any minute now.

After the past five days, 80 degrees feels cool. The rain has washed some of the pollen out of the air, which is a good thing. The cars outside were all yellow because they were so covered in pollen, but they're all different colors now.

And I'm finally starting to feel like I might make it.

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I was reading the Yarn Harlot's blog today, and she mentioned a bag she had her yarn in. The site that bag link is to appears to be down at the moment, but the link should work when it's back up again. She also mentioned that she had one of their knitting bags, and it looks like dynamite! Same caveat on the link. I'm hoping that somebody has them for sale at the MSWF!

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I don't really have a lot to talk about at the moment. All I've been doing for most of the last week is lying on my back reading and melting.

Right now, I'm on the last Twilight Series book, Breaking Dawn, and really enjoying it. It's about teenage love, so it's full of hormones and "I'd rather die than...," vampires, and werewolves, but it's a quick, easy, fun read. I'm enjoying it. 

The books are also so big that they'd make great doorstops, so I got the first two books of The Princess Diaries out of the library so that I'd have something to take to the MSWF that I was willing to actually carry. The writing in these is very fun and alive. I'm sure I'm going to love them.

I'm going to go and recuperate from the heat.

Have a great evening! Remember, the work week is half over!

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Addition:

Check out the first annual KNIFTAS, which is the Knitting in Film and Television Awards! I loved the knitting scenes on Pushing Daisies!

Help!

It's been around 90 degrees in my apartment since Friday. I spend around $100 per month on non-prescription medicine and nutrition to keep me in good health. The temperature in my apartment melted that medication! It's a gooey, disgusting mess! The stuff that escaped is now living in my refrigerator, and I wish I could join it.

They'll be turning on the air conditioning tomorrow. That means that they'll spend the day turning it on (they tell me it takes eight hours), so it'll go on Wednesday evening, but it won't cool down until sometime on Thursday (if I'm lucky), but more likely Friday. That means I'll have been in 90 degree temperatures for 5 (probably 6, possibly 7) days. If someone did that to a dog, they'd be prosecuted by animal rights activists. 

In the past, this has gone on for a week or two in Spring, and in Fall.

I live in government subsidized housing for low income seniors. The maximum you're allowed to make and still live here (and be considered low income) is more than three times my income.

When I looked up heat exhaustion on the internet, it told me to do what my landlady said to do: go somewhere else. In other words, they're telling me that this place is not fit for human habitation. Another thing they said to do was to spray water on yourself. I went to do that last night, and discovered that my skin was red all over. I looked like I had the beginning of a bad sunburn.

One of the things that the landlady said to do is keep my windows open.  I've tried that, and it doesn't cool the place off. Last night, I had the windows open and was blowing 70 degree air into the apartment, and it stayed at 90 degrees. The building itself is so hot that putting cool air into it is not cooling it off.

What the open windows will do is give me a good dose of tree and grass pollen, plus mold spores. My eyelids feel like they're a quarter of an inch thick. I can hardly open them. And my system is so full of histamine that I can hardly keep awake.

When I used to be allergic to tree pollen and ragweed, I had time during the summer to recover from the tree pollen before I had to contend with the ragweed. But, back around 1998, I developed an allergy to grass pollen, thereby converting three whole seasons into a nightmare of illness. These allergies, combined with the extra big dose of pollen in the Spring and Fall that I've gotten here the past two years are truly disabling.

I'm hoping I can find someone in the Northern Virginia or DC area that has a stand-alone (portable) air conditioner that they no longer need or want that they would either donate or sell at a low price. It won't help me now, but it will in the Fall, and next Spring it might give me a chance to spend a reasonably healthy year.

I am not allowed to use a window mounted air conditioner, but I can use a portable one. They're hard to find, though, so the chances of finding a low priced one are correspondingly low. Feel free to send a contribution through the button in the sidebar. Any help will be gratefully accepted.

I'd like to say something witty and fun, or at least interesting, but I just don't have the energy.

Keep cool!

Maryland Sheep and Wool Is Saturday!

The first Sheep and Wool Festival I went to was in 1990, and I haven't missed one since, except for the time when I got a good dose of pollen in the car on the way up and nearly collapsed before I got to walk around much. But I was actually there, even though I didn't get to see much. That's almost 20 years!

Normally, I would be very excited about the MSWF, but it's almost 90 degrees in my apartment and has been that way since Friday. I started to suffer from all the symptoms of heat exhaustion around the end of Saturday. 

My windows have been open most of the weekend and Friday (actually most of the winter), so now I'm suffering from exposure to tree and grass pollen plus mold spores in addition to the heat exhaustion. The administrator for the building keeps telling me to open my windows (and consequently let in all the allergens). I've realized that the back room that I don't use stays cooler than the rest of the place because the window, drapes and door are usually closed. I've adopted the policy that once it's warmer outside than inside, I'm closing the windows. I'm praying for a thunderstorm.

The management of my apartment place put up a notice that the air conditioning will be started on Wednesday. That means that it will actually come on at the end of the work day, and should actually cool the building sometime around Thursday morning.

The notice says that the last frost was last week. The weather people say that the last frost here was on the 25th of March. The weather people were predicting Summer weather for the next ten days starting last Friday. They turned off the heat on Friday, and they could've turned on the air conditioning at the same time, but they elected to wait. The notice said that some people might find it "a little warm."

I don't anticipate being able to recover sufficiently to go to the festival.

I am so bummed I can't tell you. And exhausted from too much histamine and heat.

I hope you're feeling better than I am.

Warehouse 13 Is Coming!

There's a new show coming up soon on SciFi (which will become SyFy [Siffy] on the date of it's premier) which I've heard a little about. It's called Warehouse 13, and it has a lot of potential.

The same channel (with the weird new name) will be bringing Eureka back this summer! I'm very happy about that!

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I intended to post yesterday, but I've been overcome by heat. I talked to the person who runs the building I live in, and she claimed that last night was the first night it didn't freeze here. Whatever the temperature was last nigh, it took the whole night to get it down to 80 degrees in here from the high of 90 yesterday. The outside temperature went up to 80 yesterday.

Today and tomorrow it's supposed to get up to about 95, so I'm expecting temperatures of over 100 in here by later today.

She said it takes a whole day to start the air conditioning, and they've only just turned off the heat. Well, it changed from early Spring to Summer temperatures temperatures over night.

She told me to open the windows (which I've already done). She said that a lot of people complain about the heat, but she visited their apartments, and it's a little warm, but not uncomfortable.

I'm already starting to have a reaction to all the tree and grass pollen, which means that even when the AC comes on, I'll have gotten a good head start on being seriously sick by the end of tree pollen season. And since I've become allergic to grass pollen, even with air conditioning, I won't be able to recover by ragweed season, which will make me even more seriously sick by the end. If I'm lucky, I may be able to recover over the winter.

I plan to submit a list of temperatures and times in my apartment on Monday. I can't deal with it. I have a serious chance at heat exhaustion by the end of the weekend.

Stay cool and have a good weekend!

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Addition:

For a mockumercial for utilikilts (utility kilts) check here. Mockumercials are commercials for products put out by the users of the product, and are usually intended to be funny. If you're a Firefly fan, click on the Serenity option for a take-off on the fruity-oaty bar commercials.

Happy Day-After-Earthday (and a contest)

Nothing special is happening today. The most memorable thing about today (so far) is that Earth Day was yesterday. Therefore, I had no snappy title for today's post.

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Vicki Howell is running another contest for one of her new books! Get on over there and enter! She's also got some interesting projects pictured from the book. I Googled the answer, but you don't have to. All of the people who answered so far are right, so read the first one, and you'll know the correct answer. Read down a bit and you'll find the reason for the answer.

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I intended to have all the lace yarn wound into balls today and have a photo to show you, but decided that I should really vacuum, dust mop, and wet mop all the hard floors in the apartment, so I wanted to do that early, while I still had some energy. I'll recuperate in a bit and go on to wind the yarn. At about a mile of yarn, it'll be time-consuming, if nothing else. I'm really glad I have a ball winder! Otherwise, I'd go crazy. I want to get it all wound first because it's kind of a big chore, and I don't want to have to stop knitting to wind another ball of yarn. I expect to finish this later in the day, and have a photo tomorrow.

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There's a brand new Supernatural on tonight!

It's not brand new, but the SciFi Channel will be rerunning four episodes of Eureka tonight and next week, starting at 7:00 pm here. There are a lot of episodes that will be rerun by them in the near future, so keep an eye out for them. I'm hoping that it portends a new year of episodes starting soon.

Oh, and don't forget that there will be another Doctor Who episode on late tonight (early tomorrow morning). This week, it's Partners in Crime, the first episode of the fourth season!

Have a great evening!

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Addition:

I found an interesting website that teaches how to do Nalbinding. The instructions are confusing to me, but then I've always been confused by  Nalbinding, even though I've made several stabs at doing it.

For those of you who are interested in fiberarts by the Vikings or in the Middle Ages, this could be a good site to learn a new fiber craft.

Good luck!