It is 5400 BTU's of artic chill battling it out against a 93 degree night and winning.

It is sleeping at night.

It is freaking awesome, of that much I'm sure.

This weekend was entirely techno-free, and when I say that, I'm referring to e-mail and internet, not Fat Boy Slim. It was a weekend with no Cubs, no blogging, and definitely no blogging about Cubs. It was a bit hard to break away from my internet addiction, I have to admit, but I managed - I found that heroin takes the edge off nicely.

Really, though, who needs internet when you have the lake? This weekend found me and the Wife up in Michigan at her uncle's lake house swimming, tubing, and relaxing. Happy days were here again. Not that I was unhappy before, mind you, it's just...the point is that I really like the lake. What does this have to do with the setup at the beginning of the post? Nothing really. I just thought that since this is a blog, I should share the mundane details of my life.

The real point is that I didn't get back to Chicago until Sunday at around 7 and was horrified to find that it was still 95 degrees out. I should point out at this point that our car doesn't have AC and the Skyway was under construction.

Remember when the Catholic Church told you Hell looked like this:


They lied, it clearly is a sea of the damned sitting in a pool of their own sweat in construction traffic, praying for either a cooling breeze or the sweet release of death. But, of course, in Hell you are already dead, so no such luck (and, suffice to say, a breeze is nothing more than a pipe dream).

But you've probably either a) guessed that death did not claim me last night or b) are really creeped out right now and are wondering why I haven't mentioned eating brains yet. Because, you know, I would be a zombie. A zombie typing 40 wpm, but a zombie nonetheless.

For those of you that guessed option "a", you are very much right. I managed to survive the evening and the traffic, and ended up back in the comfort of my 98 degree living room.

Ahhhhhhhhhh......

no, wait, I missed a constant or two. That should read:

ARGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

or maybe:

IT BURNS!! IT BURNS!!!! OH GOD, I'M STICKING TO MY CHAIR!!!!!!!!

Soooo...this seemed less than ideal. We left the apartment pretty quickly and headed down the street where there was a little street fair going on and listened to a little music. And melted a little more. And started to go a little insane. I may have cried, I'm not sure. I blacked out a bit. All I really remember is the music ending and we were back in our apartment. Time crept on and 10:30 approached but the sweating had not stopped. The Wife and I just sort of looked at each other and realized we were both thinking the same thing. It was time to bite the bullet. After an exhauting weekend at the lake, we had to sleep. And it was still over 90 degrees in our apartment.

So, to make a short story long, we jumped in the car and headed out to the Home Depot, which was luckily open until midnight. We were on a quest - a quest for cool. We passed one of those business signs that shows the outside temp and it was registering 93 degrees. Mind you, it was 11:30 at night by this point. I can't even work that out in my mind, so I'm not going to comment. My mind=blown.

The Home Depot was down to one model, but it was perfect for our needs. And by that I mean, it made cold and we could afford it. Weeee! Cold would soon be ours!

He hauled that puppy over to the self-checkout and proceeded to, you know, checkout. But what was great was turning around and seeing the line of couples with the exact same AC unit in their shopping carts. And the line was extensive, sort of like the end of Field of Dreams. Two by two the couples had been flushed out by the heat. Clearly, the Chicago Summer had won.

(aside: why all couples? I'm thinking because it is a lot easy to endure the heat when there isn't another 98 degree body sharing your bed. That and it is nice to be able to occasionally touch your wife.)

A half hour or so later we were smiling proudly at our handy-work. A beautifully installed AC window unit...propped up with Runner's World magazines and lined with towels. Perfect. Who knew a machine made of metal and white plastic could make me so happy.