The Phantom's Fan

It was scorching hot when I arrived in Los Alamos during the last week of June. David and I thought this was how the weather was going to be the whole summer, so we went to the local True Value to look for some fans. They said that they had recently received a large shipment of fans, on the order of 40 or so, but that LANL had already bought them!

Angry, frustrated, and sweating profusely, we waited another week for the next shipment. David got his first, a large box fan, so I, being the competitive person that I am, bought a larger fan, the huge 19" monster you see above. There was only one problem: the fan, capable of whipping up a tornado at a moment's notice, needed a grounded plug, and the old apartment only had 2-prong outlets. I told myself I would just go back to the hardware store the next day to pick up the adapter.

The totally bizarre thing is that it started to rain and get cold the next day. Evidently the Los Alamos area enters what is colloquially known as ``monsoon season'' where it rains late in the day. Indeed, it was raining and reasonably cool the rest of my stay there. I never got to turn on my fan!