Medifast Status: Day 98, Down ~43.5lbs
Got up at a few minutes after five and was in to the office by twenty after six. The weather is very nice when driving in this early. Before the sun comes up it feels great. Today is supposed to be the cool day, just around 105. Tomorrow we are supposed to hit 109 again!! That is just crazy. The Grices are not used to this at all and having a harder time than we are, I think, handling the heat.
This morning, first thing when Lowe’s opened, Dominica went shopping for a free-standing air conditioner to help take the edge off of the house. The main house AC is just not keeping up at all. So we are hoping that by adding 10,000 BTUs of cooling to it that maybe it will help. I know that 10K is not a lot but it was the affordable unit and it is 10K of additional cooling, not our sole means of cooling the house. The plan is to put it into the den where everyone is gathered all day to try to make that room more tolerable. Once everyone is not in there all of the time we are going to try putting it in the server closet off of my office to turn the hottest piece of the house into the coolest – in theory. But before we can do that we need another outlet added to that room and a vent cut into the wall.
We had looked last night and our Lowe’s store is the only one in the Dallas area that has the air conditioning unit that we want (or any at all, for that matter.) So Dominica was anxious to be there first thing. They had none in stock so she bought the one returned unit that they had. It turns out that the remote that is supposed to come with it is, of course, missing. So we need to call the dealer about that.
I went home for lunch today but had a conference call so that took most of my lunch time. Then it was back in to the office. Not really so much worth the drive home.
To keep the house cool Dominica and Francesca put up sheets in front of the windows in the den. This helps cut a lot of light as those walls are all windows and it also helps to cut cooling loss since the windows are so massively inefficient. I really wish that we had had the resources to replace all of those windows this year before this heat wave hit. What a difference that likely would have made. We really got screwed by them not finishing the house work that we started in January because a lot of it revolved around making the house more efficient and, of course, those are the parts that never got done at all.
While I was home for lunch the new air conditioner was not set up yet because Lowe’s had laid it on its side and there was nothing on the box that said that it could not be on its side but once you opened it it said that if it had been laid on its side that it would have to sit upright for six hours before use. So they are planning on turning it on around four this afternoon.
I went back in to the office for the afternoon. It is nice being in the office when it is so hot. Today is actually the “cool” day this week with it only supposed to reach 104. Tomorrow is going to be exceptionally brutal with 109-110 predicted. They are sending out warnings asking everyone to raise the thermostats, avoid cooking, run nothing unnecessary, close blinds, etc.
I got home and found everyone huddled in the den with the new air conditioning blasting. The house, though, was still very warm. I discovered that Dominica had not listened to me and ran the oven to cook food and did so at the very peak of the heat for the day. So the house went up many degrees and never recovered. The air conditioning was right at its limit as it was and that pushed it well over it. So we spent the evening with the main part of the house hovering around eighty nine degrees and my office likely over one hundred. We are now in very rough shape going in to the hottest day tomorrow as we have ambient heat left from today that we will not be able to dissipate before the real heat hits.
Francesca spent much of the day playing Dragon Age: Origins which she is really liking. Dominica is enjoying getting to watch the game again, I think. She has played through it twice and watched a lot of me playing it so this is like her fourth time through it.
Liesl made a lot more potty training progress today. She is getting the hang of it and doing exceptionally well. We are really encouraged that we are likely to be out of diapers, for Liesl at least, very soon. Everyone comes in and cheers for her whenever she uses the potty successfully. She likes to sit on the potty in the den in the middle of everyone which is pretty funny.
I had a call this evening lasting an hour or so. And I did some work on Dominica’s computer to get it completely ready for her to use. Not that the office is cool enough to use something in there, but in theory she could use it now. She has MS Office all installed and ready to go and her Outlook and SharePoint are all set up.
I went to bed around eleven. It was eighty four degrees when I went to bed. But it did seem to be coming down a little. Tomorrow is going to be really rough.