Log

Okay, I now have an appointment to get the new heat pump installed on July 28-29, and the duct cleaning on July 30. Lots to do between now and then. Today's experiment involved putting a small fan into the bedroom window and letting it run for hours, once it was cooler outside than inside. It did reduce the temperature in here from 87 to 79, which is something. Meanwhile, it was cool enough outside, where I was reading in the evening, that by 8 pm I needed a jacket.

In other news, I should report that J's parents' home is okay, after the big storm Chantal hit Chapel Hill. His mom had to do quite a lot of cleanup for someone who is 82, but it sounds like she's okay too. The restaurant where they normally get food to go every Tuesday is now closed, however, and a photo of its flooded condition appeared in the New York Times. I think the pool where they swim is closed as well.

Today I “signed” the paperwork to get the new heat pump, but it may take 3-4 weeks… also they have to schedule a “permit” person and someone to double-check the measurements between now and then. Last night it only got down to 78 in my bedroom, although outside it was in the mid-50s, so today (given that it got up to 85 in here when it was 91 outside) I decided I would sacrifice the pollen-free status of my bedroom and open the window for a couple of hours before bedtime. It's around 63 outside, and I had imagined it would cool the room right down. Well, without a cross-draft, that’s apparently not going to happen. At 1:30 am it was 83 in here, and now, at almost 3 am, it’s dropped to… 82. I should find a fan tomorrow and see if it helps.

(Yesterday I bought a handy digital ambient temperature thermometer. I also can report that it’s 3-4 degrees warmer upstairs at J’s house than it is downstairs.)

Given that we’re going to have at least a week of 90+ weather, starting Friday, I had better accelerate the project of figuring out how to sleep in J’s guest bedroom. I should measure the window so I can start doing more to make it dark enough in there for me. (I can’t possibly sleep in his own bedroom – he needs it light in there so he can wake up, and he needs to wake up about four hours before me, which seems pretty disruptive.)

Oh right, I was going to report about the costs. I had two options: a standard model like I have now, which is either on or off, and an “inverter driven” model that is more energy efficient and goes at various speeds. The base price for the standard model plus installation is around $13K, and I’d get a discount for paying cash, so it would be $12K. The base price for the fancier model is about $17K, but there are various rebates and tax credits for that one, so although I have to pay more than $14K up front, the net cost to me is about $15 less than for the standard model (assuming the standard one doesn't also qualify for the tax credit? Maybe it does?). I just have to wait on the rebate from the manufacturer and the tax credit. My electricity bill should drop a bit, too. I went with that one.

Even though my sleep was a bit messed up last night, I did get enough rest that I was able to join them downtown for dinner. Our friend JC was visiting from Iowa!

The Lathe of Heaven, by Ursula K. Le Guin. I had procrastinated reading this book for a great many years – I had the idea that it was dark and stressful. The first few pages had me anticipating something along those lines, too. But soon I couldn’t put it down! It’s short and satisfying, and an especially fun (for me) aspect is that it’s set in Portland. Another thing I appreciated was that a book published in 1971 was certainly anticipating a lot of problems we’re familiar with today. I liked it very, very much.

Redwall, by Brian Jacques. I hadn’t read this book in a very long time, so it was interesting to find out what I thought again. My memories had been that the food sounds more delicious than I’d actually think if someone set it down in front of me in real life, the books seemed pretty formulaic, and especially the stereotyping bothered me, as in, why couldn’t there be any good rats, ferrets, weasels, stoats, or martens?

Now that I’ve read it again, though, I’m thinking that if you’re going to write children’s military fantasy, and if you’re going to be so violent and kill off quite so many people, it’s probably vitally important, ethics-wise, to characterize the bad guys as inherently, fundamentally bad, and to make all of the characters who die be animals of types that in real life are considered just fine to have die (via one’s cat, for example, if not more directly by humans). Otherwise it could be just too traumatic for the younger readers. There is, in fact, one species where individuals might be either good or bad, with the latter being worthy of death – the sparrows. And again, real-life children are unlikely to become personally attached to individual wild sparrows. (The foxes are bad but treated ambivalently by both sides).

So when we extrapolate from the story to the implied real-life-relevant messages, we get “enemies are generally unredeemably bad – a person’s goodness or badness is generally determined by their category rather than their individual actions” (which is not a message most of us would want kids to apply to humans) and “it may be sad to have animals die but don’t forget, these are just animals” (which does require some reflectiveness on the children’s part, since within the story they are hardly “just animals,” they are people).

Anyway! The parts of the story I most enjoyed were where Matthias leaves Redwall to go find the sword – visiting the sparrows at the top of the abbey, meeting the shrews who were thoughtlessly “democratic,” and exploring the quarry, which was far more beautiful than any real-life quarry I’ve ever heard of. I am still pondering over the decision not to name Constance’s friend the beaver – every time he appeared in the story he felt more like a strange mysterious animal than the person, because the author was making such a point not to name him. Strange!