Sorry for the language, but fuck this fucking shit.

Oh my God, it's so fucking hot in here. My house has magically transformed into an OVEN.

So at the beginning of last month, July 31, to be exact, I was in Super-Busy Productive Mode. I was preparing to host out-of-state guests, my dear friends Laura and Shawn, for Lollapalooza, and before they arrived, I was going to attend my book club meeting in the city, for which I had baked homemade cornbread FROM SCRATCH. (We were all doing a dramatic reading of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, so it was appropriate.) I arrived home, planning to quickly walk the dogs, grab the cornbread and head out. Except my garage door opener, my usual method of accessing our home, wasn't working. I realized that our power had probably gone out, and I suspected the heavy storms earlier in the day. And a housesitter misplaced our front door key, which we didn't really mind before because we planned to get a new front door. Eventually. The point being...I was locked out.

So I called a locksmith to get into the house. And let me tell you people, that's a sweet gig. It's literally about five minutes of work, and you can charge desperate people whatever the hell you want. $160, and I was finally in the house.

When I got in the house, I realized that our power was out...to approximately 50% of our home. I called Com Ed, and they sent two technicians over. The technicians informed me that the problem wasn't on their end...it was the wiring between their meter and our house. So we'd have to call an electrician.

At this point, I cancelled book club and lay on my couch catatonic, thinking of the thousands of dollars this would cost and wondering how I was supposed to entertain guests with no TV, internet access, fridge, and...worst of all...no air conditioning.

The next day, we got an electrician out who informed us that we need to fix the whole set-up outside. The wiring to the circuit-breaker was shorting out because the conduit had settled. Or something like that. He explained that he could do a temporary fix (in the realm of $440) but that all the equipment out back would have to be replaced with the help of Com Ed's technicians (in the realm of an additional $490).

So the permanent fix is scheduled for next Friday morning, and the temporary fix was working just fine, til our air conditioning died again. We're pretty sure it's related to our electrical difficulties because if you try to turn the thermostat off, all the power goes out upstairs. (Huh?)

So yeah, now we are ROASTING. For an entire week. I'm so hot, I'm, like, ANGRY. This ought to be an interesting marital experiment.