I love summer - fresh air coming through open windows! I’ve always seen air conditioning as an unnecessary convenience – not good for the environment and not necessary for me. 

When we lived in Florida, we were on the water and had the ocean breeze. I only turned on the a/c occasionally to dry things out and prevent mildew.

In my UWS apartment, installing an a/c unit required choosing between using the only available outlet for the a/c or for the internet – an easy choice. And besides, there are only a few weeks each summer that are really uncomfortable. The fans worked fine - I could deal with the noise and papers blowing off my desk - we managed to make it through without too much inconvenience. 

Two weeks ago, on a very warm, rainy evening, the windows of our Riverdale apartment were open - the sweet smells of summer were coming in, but so was the rain.

Did I really want to be inconvenienced by having to put down towels to protect the window sills like I did in the past? Did I really want to be uncomfortable even for a short time? Did really I want to deal with the hassle than comes from using fans? 

I walked over to the thermostat and turned on the air conditioner; I set the temperature to 74 degrees where it will, no doubt, stay.

So convenient!