The heat is on

… and not in an “on the street” kind of Glenn Frey manner, no. Rather: The heat pipes in our apartment are hot to the touch. The ambient temperature in most rooms is well above 80 degrees, though whether that’s just residual heat from the day or due to the heat being on, I don’t know. In the bedroom the air conditioner is strapping on its boxing gloves and being psyched up by a grizzled older air conditioner.

This isn’t the first time it’s happened. The last time (also late at night), I wrote to our landlord and checked in the morning, and it had turned off overnight. He apologized profusely and said that they’ve had some recent problems with the thermostat. The heat, of course, has discouraged me from wanting to do any serious cooking, which is good; the gas line to the stove still hasn’t been properly blessed by the City of New York and I’ve been forced to do all my food preparation in the toaster oven, rice cooker, and microwave.

The microwave, meanwhile, has decided that it will no longer recognize the numbers “2” and “4” on the number pad, requiring me to microwave things for odd durations, e.g. 1:60 or 1:90.

More annoying than any of the preceding, though, is reading the AP Stylebook and realizing that at least two extremely common punctuation habits I have are, according to the AP, incorrect and will need to be unlearned and fixed. Now that’s annoying.