Sep 15, 2008

No Soup For You!

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. -- John Lennon Merle Wayne Sneed spent Sunday planning to buy his new car. Reading, researching, looking at ads and finally deciding that a Honda Civic was the car to buy. That lead to more looking on the internet for late-model, low-mileage Civics at a good price. And then life intervened. It intervened fast and hard. Son Sneed called me while we were shopping for groceries, to report that the air conditioning wasn't working at home. I figured that I would just be able to fix it when I got home. No worries, after all, I'm a professional hardware man. Upon closer inspection of our air conditioning unit, I remembered an important bit of information. I don't know anything about how an air conditioner works. For instance, where do they store the cold air? To my dismay, it looked like the air conditioner was dead. Bright and early this morning I called an air conditioning contractor who comes into the hardware store and he sent one of his best guys over to either repair it or to sign the death certificate. It was the latter. Here is Clarence, the repairman, giving me the bad news. According to Clarence, the compressor is dead and my alternatives are to (a) buy a new compressor for about $1700, or to (b) buy a new air conditioner for about $5500. I chose b, since putting $1700 into a nearly 14-year old system seems foolish. Besides the new air conditioner is allegedly 30% more energy efficient than its predecessor, so it makes environmental sense too. Luckily for me, the economic slowdown has left these air conditioning guys with plenty of time on their hands, so they will be here tomorrow morning with a new air conditioner and a crane to lift it on to the house. They're bringing a crane, how cool is that? I guess that the new car is out until I repay myself the money we spent on the air conditioning. Bummer. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky

9 comments:

Kurt said...

Luckily you're the kind of guy who doesn't NEED a new car.

a. said...

where do they store the cold air had me in stitches.

Coffee Messiah said...

Seems to always be the way! ; (

Nan Patience said...

This leaves more time to contemplate a convertible.

Reya Mellicker said...

You know you were a bit conflicted about getting a new car. Maybe this is the universe's way of helping you resolve that conflict.

Trying to look on the bright side ...

LOVE the vid. Wow.

bitchlet said...

I couldn't see the vid/pic.

Humph.

Bob Dylan said...

Air conditioning in Arizona is not negotiable. Can't wait to see the crane photos.

the car can wait.

A Concerned Citizen said...

I'm so sorry your AC died and put your car plans on hold. On the bright side, at least you can rest easy knowing that your AC is good for another 15 years.

I see from your last couple posts that you work at a hardware store. Let me know when you visit DC and I will take you to Frager's Hardware -- it is a mom-and-pop hardware store on Capitol Hill and my absolute favorite place to shop (that's how I know I'm an adult now).

Steve Reed said...

A musical a/c repairman is always refreshing. And he looks so young!

I think Reya's right -- maybe this was a message from the universe to postpone the car.