Monday 11 August 2003

Pic of the day: I have a fan! Isn't it cool?

I have a fan!

And none too early either. The name is Melissa, and I was surprised by just how cool it felt to finally have a big fan. Then again, Melissa is not an obsessed fangirl but an electric ventilator.

The heat has just lingered on and on, until eventually I decided to help myself. It has not helped to add more and more computer accessories, all of which radiate heat like small ovens. The air in my computer corner has grown even hotter than elsewhere, and there it stayed, clinging to my precious body. Now all that is going to change.

(If umbrellas are any indication, the weather will change now. Have you noticed that when you bring an umbrella, it won't rain? Not until you have forgotten it somewhere: Then you can bet that dark clouds will come rolling in, pouring water down on you.)

***

I was thinking about doing it during the lunch break, but somehow ended up buying the next three books of Turtledove's Darkness series instead. (More about that another time, if life and limbs permit.) So half past four in the afternoon, I left work and set out for an appliance shop where I had seen small electric fans for sale, back when I bought the hard disk on Friday.

The shop worker - I don't know whether he was an assistant or something more, he certainly seemed to be in charge of things then there - triumphantly declared that he had been right a quarter of an hour ago, when he decided not to unpack the last of the fans: Someone would buy it. And someone did. It may well have been the last in the whole city: He had bought all he could get. There was still a larger model left, glittering with chrome ... so nobody needs to die from overheating just because I bought the last of the cheap ones. But they have to pay more than twice as much for their comfort.

When I came home, I set out to assemble the fan; it came in a rather flat package, IKEA style. (The first language in the manual was indeed Swedish.) Let me tell you, I sweated more trying to put the thing together than I would have done without it. I may feel like a manly man when women bounce past me in seasonally adjusted clothing, but my mechanical skills are those of a girl. A My Little Pony age girl.

(On the topic of summer and women's clothes, I say: Thank the Light for small recessions! If the dot-com age had continued, the skirts would have been little more than tasseled belts by now. At least now they reach far down on the legs. Yes, for some obscure reason the skirt length is determined by the economic climate, not by the meteorological climate. Right now that's good, because otherwise there would hardly be any clothes left.)

***

There were hardly any clothes left on me, for sure, when I finally sat down by my computer desk and turned on the fan. (OK, I am aware that this statement probably doesn't turn on any more fans, but that's the price of growing old. Most of us still prefer to, given the current alternative.) Anyway, I was surprised by just how efficient the ventilator was. Even from well beyond reach, cool air swept over me like an unexpected gust of cold fall breeze. The fan is set to move slowly from side to side, so only briefly does the wind actually sweep across my body. This is just as well, or I would have caught a cold for sure.

As it is, it is almost too much, and there is really no place to set it further away. I guess I could lock it into a position where it does not blow directly at me, but instead the flow is reflected back on me from the furniture. Probably I should try that if it gets just a little colder. Well, less hot actually. But for now, it is OK. I am satisfied. Physical comfort is not the only thing to life, but in my opinion it doesn't hurt in moderation. Such as not sweating like a horse. One could easily get used to this.