Frosty

Last night, I shivered.

I mentioned once that I like a cool house, and in a fit of hyperbole I said that some times I wake up shivering. Last night that actually happened. It seems that the air-conditioning unit for our house, which we'd had retrofitted about five years ago, has a battery backup in the controls. The function of this battery is to make the thermostat work. If this battery dies, the thermostat dies -- and it might die in the "always -- on" position. When it gets chilly enough in the middle of the night for me to turn off the ceiling fan in our bedroom, it's cold. When it gets chilly enough in the middle of the night for my wife to go pop the breaker because the air conditioner doesn't seem to be shutting off, it's cold. How cold? This cold -- this morning the thermostat (once we changed the battery) said that it should switch on at 75° -- and that it was currently 64° inside the house - at a time when it was about 82° outside.

One of the side effects of our little frost experience was that I was up in the middle of the night. I got to put on a show -- even though there was nobody around to see. Ever since my first visit to the orthopedic surgeon I've worn some kind of shoulder immobilizer. The one that I got at that visit has a lot of soft padding, and I can put it on myself -- although it took a little bit of learning on how to do it. Velcro likes to stick to everything. But during the surgery, they put a much tighter one on me -- and this one fastens in back. It may be (and actually is) quite sexy to watch a woman take off a bra, but I assure you there was nothing sexy about watching me take off this thing. In fact, prior to last night I would have sworn that I just could not do it. But the combination of the cold, and the fact that this thing rubbed Velcro against my skin as I slept (necessarily) on my back, made me say this jewel is coming off -- and after about 15 minutes of wriggling, I got it off. I now understand, more than ever, the little sigh of relief that my wife sometimes gives, at such times.

I got a pleasant surprise the other day -- a card from some relatives commiserating with me. Enclosed was a gift card for one of the local chain bookstores. I was delighted to see that -- as was my daughter, who was under the impression that this was a family card and that therefore she'd be able to buy books with it too. I disabused her of that notion. So sometime today, I'm going to go through the list of books that I want to buy and get some. I have a database of books that I want to read because I discovered years ago that if I bought a book when I first saw it, it might be months before I actually got around to reading it -- at which time I'd find out that it was out in paperback. So now unless it's a compelling novel, I wait. As tomorrow is my birthday, the timing of the card is pretty fortuitous.