I don’t have a new ep of High Tide up today and will probably not get one up this week due to everything going on here. Sorry about that. Check back next week.

WRT what’s going on around here, after much research Ramón went out and fetched home a Midea 8000 BTU inverter air conditioner, which is one of those U-shaped units that the window sash slides into. It’s also got an Energy Star rating and is super quiet.

Granted, the instructions and illustrations are not the clearest in the world, but a video helped us get it installed in the breakfast nook (all of the other windows in the living room/breakfast nook are too big for the bracing bracket). The breakfast nook is now deliciously cool, and the kitchen and living room are acceptable. We have fans blowing cool air through to the dining room and library, and a darling person is sending us a portable AC unit this weekend which we will stick in the library for the moment. Between the breakfast nook unit, the portable AC, and a larger Midea window unit (ideally one around 12K BTUs) we’ll more than match the two tons of cooling power from the defunct downstairs unit. I don’t know what this is going to do to our electric bill but the Midea units are supposed to sip energy so hopefully we won’t get slapped with something atrocious.

The cats are not that happy about the warming of the atmosphere—Jemma has taken to sprawling behind my chair where a lot of the cool air gets funnelled (unsurprisingly—she’s still pretty chunky and has thick fur), and the others have taken to hiding out in the master bath where they can sploot on the cool tiles or in my office which is maintaining a decent temperature. I can’t say that I blame them, but we’ll all just have to struggle along.

Ramón has also found a different AC company that can replace our system for less, and he wants to root around in our records and find who replaced the compressor when we first bought the house and see if we can possibly get that done again. The current AC company is only interested in selling us a new system, which we understand but cannot afford at the moment. I just want the temps to go back down to double digits.