Man Up

Before I dive in to the "story" part of this post, I had to share these two photos I found after using the search term "muy macho".

If you don't maximize this photo and read the text, you don't deserve eyeballs.

Muy macho, indeed!

And now that that's out of the way...


In order to simultaneously fulfill my monthly quota of manly actions and indulge my passion for thrift, Wednesday evening I attempted something I'd never done before...
"You thought about monster trucks while masturbating onto a pile of junk mail, for inexpensive, fuss-free cleanup?" asked my mocking mental peanut gallery.
"Shut up," I mentally replied. "You know I only do that on weekends."

No, instead I did some manly home repair.

My air conditioner is probably twenty five years old. I say 'probably' because there is no marking on the unit that would indicate an install date. I've tried estimating the age by cutting a cross-section and counting the rings, but it turns out that only works with trees and Liberace.

Whatever the case, Ronald Reagan was president when it was installed, and Bill Cosby was probably considered cool. People owned "disk" cameras. I may not have had pubes then. Breakdancing was still popular. In fact, I'm fairly certain that the guy or gal that installed the behemoth was breakdancing while they worked. Possibly in spandex, and with back-up dancers.

Hopefully, you've clued in to what I'm driving at. Namely, my air conditioner is old and the damn thing needs to be replaced. It has a slow freon leak that necessitates a service call every spring, and has chewed through capacitors/solenoids and other parts like a smoker hell bent on quitting goes through Juicy Fruit. But over the five or six years that I've had the "privilege" of owning it, I've learned a few things. One of the first lessons I learned is that my DOGS can (and do) turn off the gas to the furnace due to the terrible location of the unit (its a package unit, so furnace, blower, a-coil, fan, and radiator are all in ONE location). After watching a parade of repairmen tinker with the unit over the seasons, I've also figured out what I can repair myself, and what is best left to the experts. (Very little, and damn near everything else)

But I had three different people tell me that my fan motor was cooked, and one of the was an EXPERT. So in a pouring rainstorm, I went out and unhooked the old motor, took it to a parts store, bought a new one, made all the adjustments, and installed it myself. Again, this was all in the pouring rain.

Net savings = $300
Everything worked perfectly when I finished Wednesday evening, and I had cold air flowing like manna from heaven. I felt like the king stud of home repair.

Yesterday my new fan motor quit running.

It is hot, and I'm expecting company in about an hour. Company that plans to stay until Sunday.

I hope your weekend is better than this king stud.

I'm off to "sort through" the junk mail.