Coffee heat rising

First Day of Class

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Four and a half straight hours on my feet entertaining 50+ freshman students is…a lot. One class is overenrolled, so the total number of classmates is, at this time, well over 50. Some will drop, no doubt, but I don’t entertain much hope that the total will fall far.

Fortunately, the 101 course is a five-week session, so they’ll be out of our hair soon enough. Then for two weeks, I’ll only have 25 Eng. 102 students…or however many have survived by then.

The pavement out there is so hot that the soles of my sandals got hot enough, while I was traipsing back and forth between the classroom building and my car, to burn the bottoms of my feet. Had to make two round trips to the car to haul the massive course packets—two rolling suitcases full of the damn things. My feet aren’t quite blistered, but they’re still red and sore, two hours later.

It’s only 105 degrees today, not really very hot. But it’s soggy wet out there. Yesterday after I hung up the laundry, it took eight hours for a bath towel to hang dry. Normally a heavy terry-cloth bath towel would dry on the line in 45 minutes or an hour.

To frost the cake, I’m getting a sore throat. Just what I needed to start the semester: hot feet and a summer cold! 😀

Yesterday M’hijito invited me to a July 4 party at his house. It was a lot of fun—his friends are young couples with toddlers, very cute to watch and play with. But soooo hot! He thinks his air conditioning isn’t cooling the house because of the single-paned windows and doors, but I don’t think that’s the explanation. Something’s out of whack there: I’ve lived in many a house glazed with single-paned windows and French doors and never had the AC not cool the interior. Cost more to run: yes. Fail to operate: no.

So now I’ve got to talk him into letting me call an AC company to see why that’s happening.

My own allegedly ultra-efficient air-conditioning unit has been running almost nonstop and struggling to cool the rooms. Where the old clunk kept the front of the house cool and left the bedrooms hot, this new model cools the bedrooms pretty efficiently but leaves a lot to be desired in the public rooms. With the thermostat set at 80, the kitchen/dining room/family room is 84 and the back rooms are around 81 or 82. The other day I shoved a chair into the hall and parked next to the thermostat to read copy. Not very successful: the dog thought this signaled the start of a great game and so would not leave me alone, and it was dark and gloomy in there. Rather be hot in a brighter, more cheerful room.

Yesterday I determined to clean the filthy house and wash the laundry and do the ironing before today’s classes started, which meant having to get through those jobs in time to leave for M’hijito’s house around 3:00 p.m.

Thought I was gunna die pounding through all that physical labor in the heat. Naturally, it turned into one of those interruption-every-ten-minutes days. Pool had to be backwashed and fixed in the middle of everything; that’s just the most memorable of the drop-what-you’re-doing, tend-to-something-else, try-to-go-back-to-work moments.

Anyway, the house is now nice and clean, but by the time I got to M’hijito’s place I was so tired I could barely speak, much less hold a polite conversation. Had to leave early, before the dessert and fireworks, because I couldn’t hold my head up another minute.

Crawled into bed before dark and actually slept half-way decently. That meant getting up at 5:00 a.m. was no problem.

The idea of measuring out the dog’s food and setting up everything for breakfast the night before worked well this morning: it took all of two minutes to fix food. I may want to make that a permanent fixture, since getting ready in the morning can sometimes be a time-wasting hassle.

Okay…rest break over! Now to figure out which of these students really are and which really are not in my courses.

118° in the Shade… Or, Why I Want to Move to YARNELL!

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Not an exaggeration. By midafternoon the temp on the covered porch in back was 118 degrees. Fahrenheit, that is.

It’s 9:00 p.m. now and the heat persists: 105 in the dark. This afternoon I needed to make a quick Costco run, pump some gas, buy a couple of necessities. Walking across the parking lot made one’s skin feel burnt, exposed to something way, way too hot. God only knows what the temperature was over the asphalt surface. I sure don’t want to know.

A tiny storm blew across the Valley late in the afternoon, not enough to drop any rain to speak of but plenty to drop a bushel of devil-pod leaves and seed pods into the pool. Whee!

In Yarnell, the seedy little above-the-Mogollon-Rim wide spot in the road I dream of—my Gloccamorra, my Bali Hai—the heat topped out at 98. The night will drop to 75 degrees, and as we scribble it’s 85 up there. Tomorrow night will be around 70 degrees, and the high on Monday will be 88.

Yesterday KJG and I drove up to Yarnell, where we spent a fair amount of the day hanging out with La Maya and La Bethulia, who are happily reclaiming their weekend home from La Maya’s sister and BiL, who, after renting it for four years, have succeeded in finding their own home, down in the Chino Valley. La Maya is especially thrilled to have her escape from GDU back. La Bethulia, who spent rather more time than she wished on the roof fiddling with the swamp cooler, has other ideas…sale, for example.

But oh! it was so cool, so quiet, and so lovely up there! We visited our favorite purveyor of tourist gewgaws, the Yarnell Emporium, where a short in the electrical system had knocked out the air-conditioning. Our favorite saleslady was disgusted: melting in the heat, said she. Inside the shop, we thought it was pleasantly cool. One person’s 85 degrees is another person’s Carlsbad Caverns cool.

Don’t believe me? Along about 7:00 p.m. this evening, the AC in my house was set to 80 degrees. And so it was in the hall, in the middle of the house as far as possible from an exterior wall, where the thermostat dwells. The bedrooms? 82 degrees. The kitchen, where nothing for dinner was cooked indoors? 88 degrees.

Back in Yarnell (that would be yesterday), La Maya remarked that the house their friends Bill and Joe rebuilt and turned into a sweet little palace is for sale. Wouldn’t we like to see it?

Well, why not? What else did we have to do? So we dropped by Hill Top Realty and asked a bored Realtor if she wouldn’t like to take us over there. Hot dang…anything to get out of the office! How many times can a person manicure her nails in front of the computer?

So with a little ado, she extracted the alarm system code and a few other key bits of information from the listing agent, and off we went to view the place.

O. M. G. Is it sweet!

Big kitchen with tons of cabinet space and counter space. Dishwasher, a rarity in Arizona’s rural towns. Breakfast nook. Huge separate dining room.

Master bedroom: larger than my family room and dining room combined. Current owners have a king-sized bed and all the bedroom accoutrements in there, and a set of overstuffed chairs and accompanying tables and lamps in there.

Two other bedrooms, one as large as my master bedroom.

Vast living room with a beautiful fireplace.

A separate office, off the dining room looking out onto the boulder-strewn backyard.

Backyard: good freaking grief. It backs onto a great pile of granite boulders. When it rains, a waterfall pours off the boulders into a well designed, rock-lined drainage stream that directs the water down through a side yard and away from the house.

Shrine. You have to be there...

The backyard is very private. It cannot be seen from the neighbors’ yards. There is a trail through the rocks above, part of the world-famous Yarnell Shrine. The occasional tourist would stroll by…and by occasional, we mean “rare.”

In the side yard: A raised garden with soaker hoses and wire shelter to fend of the javelina and hungry birds.

Front yard (huge!): a spectacular art fountain procured from a Prescott artist. Trees. Ornamentals. Blue spruce. Xeric landscaping. Peaceful, pretty, quiet. One house from the end of a cul-de-sac.

Two-and-a-half-car detached garage: room for a ton of storage, the Dog Chariot, and a nice golf cart for junketing around town.

No pool. No effing helicopters. No traffic roar. No sirens. No heat.

Gosh.

They want $199,000 for it, about what I probably could get for my house if I’m lucky. However, Realtor Lady remarked that these days Yarnellites will accept just about any bid they get. She suggested just coming up with a figure and offering it: nothing ventured, nothing gained. If I could get it for $150,000 and it really doesn’t need any upgrades or fix-up (on the surface, it appears to be a turnkey sort of thing), I could afford it.

On the other hand…

My son is down here.

All my friends are down here.

Choir is down here.

My pseudo-job is down here.

The pseudo-job, I could deal with: rent an apartment or camp out with SDXB and other friends for the days I have to physically coalesce in front of a classroom. A pain in the ass, but doable.

Hm. Because the house has a separate, dedicated office, both of the secondary bedrooms could function as guest bedrooms: enough space for two couples to come up out of the heat. Allll summer long. The friends problem could be addressed.

Yarnell.

♥

 

 

What’s this thing?

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So this afternoon Cassie and I arrive home from a trip to Yarnell (about which later, in a less tireder moment) to find this interesting flower growing on a weed that volunteered in the vegetable garden:

Does anybody have any idea what this critter is? Click on the image for a larger view.

Four of these plants popped up in the garden, arriving from where, no one knows. (Probably via bird droppings, one expects.) They had a suspiciously cultivated look to them, so out of idle curiosity, I decided to resist the impulse to extirpate them. Whatever they are, they have a pretty flower.

Looks a little like a gazania, ’cept for the leaves, which are most ungazania-ish.

Here’s what the whole plant looks like:

It’s about 15 inches tall. Whatever it is doesn’t seem to mind downright extraterrestrial climates: the temps have hovered around 110 degrees here for the past week, occasionally rising to 115.

Here’s another attempt at a photograph, which, when clicked upon, does give you a nice blow-up:

Whaaa????

Car: Budget (and wheels) rescued

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Okay, so we all remember how Chuck, the redoubtable owner of Chuck’s (Awesome, Incredible) Auto Service, opined that the work needed to keep the aged Dog Chariot running would come to some $1,300. And how this led me to speculate that now may be the time to raid my Car Savings and purchase something newer, jazzier, and more fuel-efficient.

Well. Yesterday the Chariot had its second major surgery down at the car hospital, and the mechanics handed over their bill:

$786. And change.

Say what? “Did you include the price for fixing the oil leak last week?”

“Yup. This is the total.”

Good thing I didn’t decide to trade the thing in, eh?

My decision to keep it was based on the theory that $1,300 is a far cry from the $20,000+ a new car will cost. Think of how much farther a cry $786 is!

Awesome! This will mean I just may not have to raid the long-term living expenses fund to pay the bill.

I’ve got about $538 left in the budget, to last 22 days. That’s more than enough if I don’t eat out or diddle away money on clothes or buy booze or indulge in any similar distractions. Somehow I think I can get restrain myself for three weeks. Let’s say I have $200 left from the regular discretionary budget by the end of the June/July cycle: that leaves $586 to scrounge up somewhere.

Conveniently, about $1,700 remains in emergency savings, despite the dental bills, a large chunk of which were paid for out of that cookie jar. Of course I don’t want to draw it down by $600 (give or take). But I certainly can. It gets replenished at the rate of $200 a month, so if no more ridiculous things happen (yeah…), it will be back to normal in three months and looking flush in four or five months.

Meanwhile, the boys down at Chuck’s believe the car will run pretty much trouble-free for another 50,000 miles. One of them thinks it could run well for another 100,000 miles!

I put about 10,000 miles a year on a car. At that rate, the Dogmobile will last another five years.

In five years, I’ll be 71 years old (holy gawd!). If I buy a new car then, it should run at least ten or twelve years, maybe longer. By then, it’ll be time to quit driving.

In other words, if the Dog Chariot runs another five years, the next car really will be the last car I’ll have to buy. Hallelujah!

Not that I’m in any hurry to shuffle off this mortal coil… But among my favorite things to do, buying cars ranks up there with…oh, having a root canal without anaesthetic. I just loathe dealing with car salesmen. Much, much worse than dentists!

And…I have enough savings to buy one, count it, (1), more vehicle in my lifetime. If I buy a car now, it probably won’t last until I’m forced to get off the road. Unless things magically get a lot better (and between you and me, I believe the exact opposite is in the works), I can’t imagine how I could possibly come up with the cash to buy even a second-hand car in 2021.

So, driving the Chariot until it falls apart like the Minister’s One-Hoss Shay is going to work out. Very nicely.

🙂

Image: Colorized car engine. en:User:Amal. Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License.

Off-Label! How to REALLY clean glass shower doors

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This afternoon KJG happened to mention that she came across an incredible way to get those dratted clear glass shower doors really clean—and do it without working yourself to death. She’d heard you could use Jet-Dry, the blue rinse agent that goes in the dishwasher, to cut soap film in the bathroom.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained…last night in a moment of boredom she poured some on a sponge and slathered it generously over the shower door where her DH loves to splash suds around. Then she rinsed it off.

And to her amazement, the glass came totally clean. With no scrubbing!

This has been a well-encrusted shower door, she says, one that she hasn’t been able to fully de-soapify in years.

So. Try this.

If you have clear instead of frosted shower doors, be aware that some clear doors have a coating that’s supposed to repel soap scum. If yours is one of those, you might want to be careful about smearing Jet-Dry on it—the stuff is pretty strong. Test it in a small corner first. Wear a pair of rubber gloves to protect your skin, and be very careful not to let it splash near your eyes. The manufacturer pointedly does not list the ingredients (what are they trying to say to us?), but the fumes are unpleasant, IMHO, suggesting the stuff is not something you’d want to wallow around in.

Wiping with a Magic Eraser is said to help, too.

Once the shower door is clean, you can make it soap-scum repellant by adding a coat of Rain-X, the water repellant made to go on car windshields.