This summer has passed at the speed of light, reminding me that there is nothing like going to school to make you really appreciate the season. Even though I’ve still been working, the freedom from classes has made the summer really seem like a vacation, because oh my god! I have time to do things I like to do without feeling guilty about that paper I should be writing or that book I have to read before next class! Except that it’s been too fucking hot for most of the past two months to play with yarn and fiber, which is something I would have really enjoyed doing. I hear you asking, “Julie, why don’t you just turn on the air conditioner? It’s the 21st Century, we have that technology!” I will tell you why not, with my annual rant against Con-Ed.

I have had my air-conditioner on a fair amount this summer, actually. But because Con-Ed charges more than any electric company in the Continental United States, and because I don’t want them to own me any more than they already do, I have tried to…oh, how do I put this? I’ve tried to be a cheap bastard. We’ve kept the damned air conditioners on the highest temperature we could stand and always left them on the Energy Saver setting. I can count the hours where those air conditioners were set to less than 78* on two hands and one foot, and we didn’t leave them on around the clock. Oh, no, since we have no geriatric cats anymore, we let Freddie and Charlie soak up a bit of heat during the day (Animal Planet’s Cats 101 assured us that cats like heat, people, we did this with Animal Planet’s guidance), and then set the a/c timers to come on an hour before we got home. We were really trying just to cut the humidity in the house and make do by wearing as few clothes as possible. And the bill for the two room apartment that I share with one man and two cats from June 8-August 6? It was $292, even with those remedial steps. I shudder to think what it would have been if the a/c had been set to 76*. And we will not discuss the night Con Ed gave me a robocall telling me to turn off all non-essential electric devices, such as my television and air conditioner because of the potential for rolling blackouts (mostly because the irony of that, as Rick and I sat in our underwear in the dark with just the TV and a/c on still makes me laugh).

You can imagine that 78* doesn’t really make you want to spin, knit, or weave wool, so I haven’t been. I’ve been reading fiction like a fiend, giving my brain the candy that it wants after two semesters of graduate school. The money I didn’t give to Con Ed went to Amazon so that I could read the Southern Vampire Mysteries on my Kindle. I have exactly two weeks before classes start, and I am going to finish the last two books in that series, the last book in the Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, and the most recent Elizabeth Peters novel before I have to start reading about Vietnam if it kills me. Think I won’t? Well if the temperatures stay like they have all summer, it’s not like I’m going to be playing with wool any time soon, even with the a/c on.

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