fan-favorite

I was awaken this morning at 2am by the sound of silence and the stillness of the air. Every night, I sleep with the fan on. It's not just a summer thing either; I need the hum of the fan in order to sleep even in the winter. I've had this fan since I lived in Long Haus years ago and at 2am this morning, it finally gave up.

Years ago, there was an article on DIY culture vs the disposable culture. The author had his fan break and he fought the initial impulse to run out and buy a new one and instead took his broken one apart on his own and managed to fix it. The fan then became more valuable to him and it made him constantly second-guess the impulse to purchase his way out of problems. This article has stuck with me for years so when my fan broke, I tried a different plug in and then got out my tools, at 2am.

I'm not electrically-inclined but I thought a fan would be relatively simple. I could see a lot of dust in the back of the fan so I was that was just gumming up the works. I opened it up, cleaned it out with a fine brush and reassembled it...to no avail.

Sigh. I have a lot of issue sleeping in the heat anyway. I tried sleeping under the AC unit but the couch isn't very comfy. I barely got any sleep that night. In the late evening, I walked down to the Foster Fred Meyer to buy a new fan but they were sold out. I caught the bus to Home Depot at Johnson Creek but they were sold out. The Johnson Creek Freddies had a handful of box fans left so I bought one out of desperation.

I turns out that it roars loudly and gives good breeze. I think I'll be happy with it. It's a little more obtrusive so I'll have to figure out something else to use during winter but I'm not going to think of that sweet, chilly, soup-eating, hot-cocoa-drinking time just yet. It'll just make me more annoyed with this blasted summer.