Rick Steves' fanny pack
2004-05-14
10:56 p.m.

Oh, air conditioning, why hast thou forsaken me? Why? Why, when I asked you to cool, did you heat? I come home to discover that you hath filled the house with heat and a burning smell (which is probably the house melting) and the thermostat is registering 90 degrees, which is as high as it can go. Have I been overworking you? Because, sweetheart, this is Arizona and this is only the beginning. We're expecting it to be 96 degrees out tomorrow. Which is a Saturday, so I am doubting that anyone will come counsel/ repair you. And then Sunday will be 98. Oh, air conditioner, why?

When I discovered the a/c was throwing a fit, I called my husband at work to see if he had any ideas. His ideas were to 1) check the breaker (and see if it was broken, I guess) and 2) to open the garage door and the inside garage door for a few hours. Er, okay. Like, open up the house completely while I'm home alone at night in an area with tons of coyotes and javalinas? Okay. I think maybe I'll open windows that have screens instead. But thanks?

I am not looking forward to tomorrow. It is freaking hot in here at 72 degrees out. I don't want to feel it at 96.

But! I am looking forward to! Our trip! I finally stopped crapping around and booked all of our travel. We were hemming and hawing over it all, and where should we go and oh there are so many places and oh wouldn't it be nice to go back to Ireland and check out the north this time or oooh, let's go to France and check out Provence and Lichtenstein is really small, what's up with that? We were finally all set on flying into Zurich and then taking a train to Cinque Terre in Italy and then flying out of Florence. But then! Randomly! We were like: Prague? I hear beer is a dollar. And then one of my friends said: Budapest is an 8 hour train ride from there. And we said, okay. And so today I booked two tickets into Budapest and out of Prague.

While I was booking the tickets, there was all this trouble with our original dates, so I kept throwing out cities. I just grabbed a map of Europe and was like, What about Vienna? Can you get us home from there? What about the 28th? What about Munich? Do they have an airport? What about Berlin? We could get to Berlin. Madrid? I was willing to get us pretty much anywhere to get a flight, but then I just totally swapped the date (the month and season, even) and boom, it worked. Sure, we have to switch planes 4 times on the way back (and even airports in London) but whatever. I predict that we lose our luggage at least twice on the trip (which includes a stopover for a wedding in Vermont). But I don't even care. Hooray frequent flier miles! My husband spent about a quarter of our first 2 1/2 years of marriage away on business, and this is our reward for putting up with it. I'm going to clean out every first class lounge between here and Rick Steves' fanny pack.

My poor computer is working overtime to cool itself down in this heat. I need to give it a break. Peace out.