Freebee

So, the floors are being refinished in the new house right now and since it's been humid the drying times between coats of polyurethane are longer than expected. To help the process along I decided to start the main a/c unit up in the great room. I've never wired up these type of units before. I've talked about it on the phone many times, but I've never sat in 125+ degree attack on a summer day and tried to wire one up from scratch. How hot is an attic? Well hot yoga is limited to an ambient room temperature of 105 degrees. Working in a much hotter cramped environment surrounded by fiberglass insulation is even less fun.

Anyway, I walk into the house and the polyurethane fumes hit me like a wall. The heat and humidity have trapped the fumes in the house and by the time I set up the 12 foot ladder to get into the attic, I'm dripping with sweat and starting to get a little loopy. 2 hours later, after several trips up and down ladder, the unit still doesn't work and I have no idea why. I trace the power wires around inside the air handler and find a blown fuse. Apparently a few months ago someone, lets call him John, cut the wires to the air handler before killing the power which blew the fuse. It's an oddball fuse so I had to make a few phone calls to track it down. After a quick trip to the store and another 30 min in the attic the unit was up and running. I waited another hour to make sure that everything was running properly and that the condensate drain wasn't clogged. With everything buttoned up, I pack up my tools and leave. In total I probably spent about 5 hours in the house that day. My head is pounding and I assume it's from dehydration. I stop at 7-11 to get some gatorade, water, and advil for the trip home. I make a pit stop at the office to drop off some garbage and decide to take Rt 25 (middle country rd / jericho tpke)back  home because I'm not feeling well.

At some point I realize that nothing around where I'm driving looks familiar. I pull into a parking and hit the guide me home button on the GPS. I'm almost 30 minutes east of my house. I'm on Rt 25A in Wading River and have no idea how I got there. I must have been driving home from the office for about an hour. See the picture below? I drove between the 2 red dots:

My guess is that I got on 347 instead of Rt 25 and took 347 until it merged in with Rt 25A. Then I just kept driving east on Rt 25A until I realized something was out of place. I have no recollection of driving that far or for that long. Yeah, I was a menace to society. By the time I got home my headache was so bad I had to squint to focus at anything. I can only guess that the polyurethane is what messed me. When I went into the condo I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror and my eyes were like pin drops. I kept turning the light on and off to see if my pupils would dilate and then after about 10 minutes I realized that... well, I've been in the bathroom for 10 minutes turning the light on and off so I must be rocked off my ass. This wasn't a pleasant feeling. I had the headache from hell and I was nauseous. I took more advil and drank as much water as I could stomach and went to bed. Meh. It might have been a freebee, but there was little fun involved. I could laugh about it the next day as I told the story about a dozen times, but looking back on it I also realized how dangerous it was... I could have fallen off the 12 foot ladder while I was going in and out of the attic ceiling or I could have blown a light while driving and killed someone. Thankfully nothing happened, but let this be a lesson to you, kids... Drink and drive. Don't huff polyurethane and get behind the wheel.