Our New Best Friend

If you're not familiar with the Seattle climate, I should explain that it's typically very mild. Generally speaking, the high temperatures in the summer are in the 70s or maybe the low 80s. In the winter, it doesn't normally get very cold...typical high temps are in the 40s. The average yearly snowfall in Seattle is only 8 inches, which explains why everyone around here freaked out when we got 5 inches in one "storm" back in December. This is my first summer living here, but I know that it does occasionally get hot. It just doesn't happen very often, which is why most apartments we looked at aren't air conditioned. It's just not necessary most of the time.

However...starting late last week, the weather gurus around here started getting anxious. We've been getting weather alerts for close to a week now, letting us know that this area is in for "extreme heat." Yep...it got over 90 yesterday! Actually, the forecast is for high temps above 90 all this week, which is very unusual.

Unfortunately, like I said, our apartment has no air conditioning. (In fact, our gas fireplace, which is the source of our heat in the winter, never actually turns off....but that's a story for another post.) We do have a ceiling fan in the dining room, but that's it. So if there's no breeze coming in the windows (which was the case yesterday...there's also an "air stagnation warning" for this area), it gets pretty darn hot in here.

I headed to Walmart yesterday afternoon to buy a fan, but apparently I wasn't the only one who had that idea. Walmart had one fan left, and it was actually an outdoor fan that you could hook a hose up to and use as a mister...and they were charging $70 for it. No thanks. Fortunately, not as many people had thought to check Walgreens, and that's where I was able to buy our new best friend!

This lovely creature was pretty easy to set up...took me about 10 minutes yesterday. It kicks off a good amount of cool air, and it oscillates enough to hit all of our seating in the living room (or the entire bed in the bedroom). It made hanging out in the living room bearable last night, and it made sleeping pleasant. It even has a remote control and a timer (so we can set it to turn itself off...I'm guessing while we're sleeping, so we don't wake up cold?). I'm loving this thing. Definitely $30 (after a $10 mail in rebate) well spent!!