I ordered a portable air conditioner, since it’s been hot lately in L.A. and my building seems to retain heat. By the time it gets cool outside in the evening, my apartment seems to be at its hottest, and putting a fan in the window at full blast to draw in cool air works somewhat, but it’s noisy. At lower blast it’s not bad, but doesn’t cool the room down enough, and who wants to have a fan in the window all the time? So I’ve been shopping for an A/C unit, and ordered “this guy”:http://sunpentown.com/wa10poca.html at a much better price from an online retailer. Seems they have these sorts of units (air conditioners which don’t need installation as they vent hot air outside through a dryer-hose like attachment) at Target and Wal-mart and Best Buy, but priced higher with little selection. I placed my order on Monday with their FedEx Ground shipping option, and lo and behold I had a box arrive at work on Tuesday! That was a pretty impressive feat of shipping bravura. Lugged the box home, excited to set it up, opened the box, and inside was… a heavy-duty portable ice maker. Now there’s a great idea! I hadn’t thought of that! Ice cubes can keep me cool! I don’t need an air conditioner, I’ll just, uh, throw a bunch of cubes in the tub and take a bath in ice water whenever I’m feeling hot. Maybe I can tape ice packs around my arms and legs perpetually like the bruised-up athletes on campus. On second thought, if I had played a sport which bruised me up so badly that I had to wear ice packs duct-taped to my body continuously, then I would have serious thought about quitting that sport and taking up something less physical, like chess, or… boxing. You don’t see many boxers wearing ice, do you? I think it was the women’s water-polo team wrapped up in ice all the time. Hmm, I could make a movie about a giant ice cube, and call it… _The Cube_. I could… put buckets of ice in front of my window fan thereby blowing in cool air. Or I could… just tell them they got the order wrong and to please pick it up and send out the correct thing. Which I did. So it’s going to be another hot weekend, in the meantime.