we're pretty cool around here. actually, never mind.

Well it's official.  Spring has sprung and I've caught the spring cleaning bug.  I have cleaned every window in this house, and I'm convinced that there is no better cleaning product on the market than Windex with vinegar.  It makes the windows as clear as, well, glass.  I was feeling pretty puffed up with clean window pride on Thursday afternoon when I decided I'd run my damp cloth over the screen, and then looked down to see that my cloth, which had heretofore been white, had turned black.

Pride goeth before the fall and the cleaning of the window screens which are, evidently, quite filthy.

Anyway, in addition to all the reading and window cleaning, we've also been getting some use out of this.



My parents Santa Claus brought this for me for Christmas, 2004 and for whatever reason, I saved it.  It now lives a good, useful life as a doorstop for my office door.  Our (very clean) windows have been wide open lately and it's the perfect height and weight to keep the door from slamming shut when the breeze comes through.

Plus, my parents Santa paid the elves at Kaplan, Inc. $32.00 for this sucker and I intend to get every penny out of it.  It's been living the doorstop life for a few weeks but apparently Matt never noticed it there, because the other night he walked down the hall and said "Well, well, well, what do we have here?"

Before I knew it we were six questions deep into practice test 2.

Just as I was thinking, "Well, either Penn State had MUCH lower admission standards than I realized back in 2006, or I've gotten a lot dumber in the last 12 years," Matt proudly announced, "You know, I really think I'm a LOT smarter now than I was when I actually took the SAT's!"

Well.  Isn't that nice.  That makes one of us.  He was practically giddy and I'm over here struggling to pick the prime number out of a lineup. and feeling nauseated over the sight of the impending word problem featuring two trains leaving the station at the same time but at different speeds and at what point does train A pass train B and FOR THE LOVE CAN WE PLEASE GET TO A READING COMPREHENSION QUESTION?

I flipped through the book tonight just to see if my sixteen year old self had actually written anything in it.  I found two problems that I'd worked on.  Here's the first one.  To my credit, I did attempt to show my work there on the right, but I kind of trailed off at the bottom and then proceed to RULE OUT EVERY SINGLE ANSWER.

The other problem I worked on was this word problem.  I knew enough to make a chart but didn't bother to complete the problem because listen, let's just hope Joe and Stella each had at least five bucks on them.

Speaking of intelligence, or lack thereof, let me tell you about another little situation that went down in our house this week.  We don't have central air in our house, but we have wall AC units in our kitchen and our downstairs den which do a great job at keeping the house cool in the summertime.  We replaced the kitchen unit when we started our remodel back in the fall because while the old 1983 model worked like a charm, it featured actual wood paneling and some sort of now-illegal coolant.

(This is not a stock photo.  This is an actual photo of the actual air conditioner that was in our house when we bought it.)

The fan in the new AC was broken when we got it, so we had it replaced and it worked fine the two or three times we used it before the cool weather set in.  We turned the air conditioner on last week, and other than the display lighting up with the temperature, nothing happened.  The fan didn't turn on, the compressor didn't kick in, NOTHING.  We called the store where we purchased it, and they sent out a repairman named Pedro last Friday.  Pedro pushed a few buttons and told me that it was in such bad shape that in order to fix it, it would need to be taken to the repair shop for three weeks.

Since it's a wall unit, that meant we would have a giant hole in our wall.

For three weeks.

In June.

Matt and I discussed this AT LENGTH and voiced great frustration towards the manufacturer, the store, and anyone and everyone associated with this lemon of an air conditioner.  It was the cherry on top of a bad week for house repairs around here.  There may have been tears.

That poor Matt gets so emotional.

Anyway, we finally decided to buy the exact same unit from Home Depot, brand new, because our downstairs unit is also on the fritz after a solid 30 year life.  We figured we could put the new one in the kitchen, send the original to the shop, and then when that one got fixed, we could put it downstairs.  That way we could avoid a three week hole in the wall, and not feel like we were living on the surface of the sun.

So, on Wednesday night, we picked up the new unit, which weighed approximately 783 pounds, hauled it into the house, unpacked it, heaved the old one out of the wall, put the new one in, and then plugged it in and pressed that power button.

And do you know what happened?

ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

I may not have aced the math section of the SAT's, but I knew the probability of us buying TWO faulty Whirlpool air conditioners was pretty slim.  So I said, "Do you think the problem might not be with the air conditioner, but with the outlet?"

Matt and his brother replaced all the outlets in the kitchen and (I'm just throwing out numbers here) put a 120 volt outlet under the AC.  Turns out, it requires 150 volts.

The English major triumphs again.

So, for the moment we have two giant air conditioners in our kitchen, but they will be rearranged and outlets re-run and hopefully, we will be cool again in no time.

Well, literally.

Figuratively, we have a long way to go.