Ok, yes, this another rant about the US and it’s love affair with climate control. Which usually means air conditioning in most states at this time of year. As part of the rant, consider that I have complained about not being able to open windows which some might say is a safety precaution on the second floor of a rehab facility.

You don’t want to hear my reply to that bit of absurdity. To whit: If patients could open a second floor window by themselves and crawl out to fall, they wouldn’t be in a rehab facility. Anyone accomplishing that particular task could probably kill themselves in a myriad of other ways and, again, wouldn’t be bothering with a method that would be interrupted.  Not being morbid or anything. Windows can be engineered to let in air while also keeping in children, small animals and others who might otherwise use this as an escape avenue.

Instead – we get versions of climate control. In this case, it is a system normally seen in low to medium budget hotels. You know what I am talking about. On the wall next to the window is this metal container which holds a fan along with a heating and/or cooling element and one to two control dials. If you have one dial, your choices are normally along the lines of fan at high or low along with a heating or cooling choice of high or low. Anti-clockwise gives you one set of temps while clockwise gives you the other. Another favorite design option is one dial for the fan speed and another on which you can do “dial a temp.” Lastly, and probably the cheapest arrangement has pushbuttons for hot or cold and the dial is only for fan speed.

I think I should be really impressed – in a two bed room there is actually a unit on each side so that we can have dueling temperatures! And fan noise, let us not forget the fan noise. Loud, but certainly not anywhere able to drown out a determined television watcher.

Oh? I didn’t mention the presence of dueling TVs?