Kayla thought she had a meeting at 10 AM today, so off she went to breakfast and then did some errands. When she got home she discovered that that thanks to misreading a time (we're usually very good at this thanks to so many meetings we attend taking place in lots of different places online) the meeting was actually at 2 PM Pacific Time.

The issue here was that I had a $20 discount coupon from Jiffy Lube for air conditioning service, which the minivan needed, and it was good today only. The original plan was for Kayla to take her meeting and then I'd take the minivan to Sparks. Jiffy Lube is only open until 4 PM on Sunday, and an AC job takes a lot longer than an oil change, so if I was going to take advantage of this offer, it had to happen sooner, not later.

I got to JL and after confirming that the Astro has had its AC upgraded to the modern coolant (that we did years ago up in Oregon), they said they could do it, but that it would take a little while. I wish I'd know just how long it would have taken, because had I known, I might have tried to get some lunch. Instead, as I typically do when going to that JL, I ordered a coffee from Starbucks, which was ready (albeit under Kayla's name, but nobody ever checks) by the time I walked across the shopping center parking lot. For an oil change, they often are done by the time I get back, but an AC recharge involves purging the system (sucking out all the coolant), which turned out to be harder than usual, they said, because the coolant was sort of goopy. That's odd because I had the system completely repaired last year, but okay. Fortunately for me, I had a new issue of Trains to read.

I had assumed that some of the coolant had leaked out of the system, but they said that the biggest problem was that there was too much coolant in it, which was part of why it took so long to purge. They also were concerned that even after recharging, it wasn't putting out as much cool air on Max AC, but I reassured them that this older vehicle and older system doesn't work that well at slow engine speeds. I rarely turn on Max AC except at freeway speeds because it needs more power to run the compressor than works at slower speeds.

After stopping to grab a sandwich and soda, I set out on I-80 east for home, and to my relief (in multiple ways, as it was pretty hot out there), I got the level of of air conditioning I would expect from a properly functioning system.

I wanted to get this done before Westercon because it is a long drive (around 500 km each way) from Fernley to Santa Clara, and much of it will be in hot places including the Central Valley of California. Here's hoping that this recharge holds for a while.

Although I'm nominally the person coordinating Westercon 77's two official functions, I won't be around the convention that much. I'm doing the driving to Santa Clara on Thursday morning, but Kayla is in charge of Site Selection and at the moment, the plan is for her to drive us home on Monday. Martin Pyne is chairing the Westercon Business Meeting. Anyway, today I did my part by doing the printing of the site selection ballots and Westercon Business Meeting papers. It's appropriate that I was using the large printer that we bought for Westercon 74 because we had to be totally self-sufficient for our on-site printing, and that we also used to print the Program Book.

Lisa and I printed all of the program books, including collating and stapling them. It's hard to say whether that was cheaper than having it printed, but it did mean that we didn't have any wasted copies. Had we run out of program books on site, we could have printed more of them, and then post-con we printed what we needed to send publications to our non-attending members. We ran a huge part of that printer's service life off of it in a very short time, and, after consulting with the Westercon 77 treasurer, I personally bought the printer off of the convention at half what the convention paid for it, which seemed pretty reasonable to me.

Our printing needs for Westercon 77 in Santa Clara next weekend are much less than Tonopah's were, and the papers are now packed up with the stuff like the ballot box, cash box, and the Gavel of Westercon to take to BayCon/Westercon.

One week from today, I (and/or Kayla) will be in Santa Clara moving in to the hotel for Westercon/BayCon. Mostly Kayla, to be honest, but someone with the credit cards and ID will have to check us into the hotel.

If you had told me that I would need to wear a jacket on the first full day of summer here in northern Nevada, I would have told you that you had gone crazy. But while most of the USA is suffering under an extreme heat wave, the big low-pressure system pushing that heat dome is coming through my part of the country and it's quite cool. After peaking at 35°C a couple of days ago, today's forecast high is a mere 18°, and it was about 9° at sunrise this morning when I walked to the Wigwam and huddled over my coffee, using it to put feeling back into my fingers.

Not that I'm complaining! Not at all. Lisa and I have errands in Reno today, and I will be happy to not swelter in the typical summer heat as we go about our business planning for our respective summer travel plans coming up in the next few weeks.

I was up about 3:15 this morning, and Day Jobbe stuff (split between Kayla and me, but it tires us out no matter who does the work meant I was working until 8 PM tonight. There was a break when Kayla went to get dinner, but it was still a long day, and so sleeping tonight shouldn't be difficult. And fortunately, I don't have to be up on Friday until 4:30 AM, which counts as "sleeping in"