Lesson learned...

I learned a good lesson yesterday...

Not long after I woke up, I came to the realization that I just couldn't put off the job of dragging the humidifier out any longer. I don't know what spurred me to action. It could have been the haboob (Google it if you have to) that tried to exit my body when I blew my nose. It could have been the dry hacking cough which has been plaguing me for the past month. It could have been any number of things; regardless of the reason, I sprinted into action and finally found my Kenmore Quiet Comfort 12 gallon humidifier hiding in the basement.

I hauled the KQC12g up to the main floor, cleaned it, put it back together, ran out to Sears and picked up a new filter for it, and found a nice place to put it...right in the corner of the dining room. It really did seem like the perfect spot. The KQC12g humidifier is rated for a 2,500 square foot home. Mine is only about half that and, to top it off, this corner is almost in the exact middle of the house. It is the perfect spot for an even distribution of humidity throughout the whole house...and it has an outlet. Besides, I have yet to find anything else to put in this corner. It's in the dining room in that awkward spot between the hallway going to the basement and bedrooms and the door way to the kitchen. It's not big enough for a nice piece of furniture...so it exists as an empty column of space in my already cramped little home.

When I got the KQC12g up and running, it would only flash a 25% as the humidity level. This is the KQC12g's calm and quiet way of letting me know the humidity level in the home is significantly low. I filled it up, then refilled it immediately, since the first filling almost instantly drains from the holding tank, and let the KQC12g do it's work.

At about half-time, during the Lions game, I noticed the area around the chair I was enjoying watching the game from was getting kind of warm. In all honesty it was getting hot. Well, that chair sits directly in front of the register for that room. I closed the register and solved my problem post haste. A little later, I stood up to walk to the kitchen and was greeted by an extraordinary amount of heated air from the waist up. I made note of the changing climate conditions via a verbal exchange with my bride, who was sitting at our tall dinning room table, only to find she had been cognizant of this issue for quiet some time while I huddled down in the lower altitudes, watching the game. Being a normal man, I quickly discharged all concerns about the issue from my brain and returned to watching the game.

As the game came to a close, and I watched the Lions jiggle the handle to the toilet they are in the midst of flushing themselves down, I stood upright to find that my house felt both more humid and really warm. Not just pleasantly warm, but "do-you-have-an-80-year-old-woman-living here?!" hot! A quick walk around the house proved this to be true in every single room. What in blue blazes was going on here? The furnace had been running non-stop for nearly 6 hours, which only now seemed odd. True, it was cold outside, but not THAT cold.

My investigation lead me to the thermostat, in the dining room, which was proudly telling me it was only 67 degrees in my house. "LIAR!" I shouted at the thermostat at the top of my lungs and reached over to see if the temperature settings had been changed...and that's when I felt that stream of moist cool air blowing straight up from the KQC12g and in front of the thermostat....

...needless to say, the KQC12g is now humming away over on the other side of the room. My house finally cooled back down to something less than "sleeping-in-a-tent-on-a-hot-muggy-night-in-July" hot at some point during the night and I learned to pay more attention when doing something as simple as setting the humidifier up.

The infamous corner.