My Many Fans

It's true, I admit it, I do enjoy thinking of myself as having multiple fans, but in this case I'm talking about those spinny things that move the air around. I was so glad to see that the apartment came with a couple--good not only for cooling off, but for shooing away mosquitoes and other buggies that enjoy coming in through windows left wide open to the cool Jerusalem night. It seemed like just another one of the many perks this place continues to reveal.

I had a very hard time sleeping last night --first day of school jitters combined with first night all alone in new apartment with new noises and the like. So at 1:30am or so I decided that a fan might be just the thing: it would cool me off so I could snuggle under the covers and the white noise would help too. I got the first fan from the living room and plugged it in. It shook so hard that it jumped around and would soon have walked a few feet and unplugged itself had the noise been bearable enough to let it run. I tried every setting, I tried giving it a shake or two; no luck. There was another fan in the other room, a cute little number that could clip on to the end of the desk AND oscillate. I tried to plug it in, but the plug turned out to be...not Israeli and not American. I stupidly tried using my American plug adaptor with it. It seemed to fit but still wouldn't run --and thank goodness because in my insomniac stupor it hadn't occurred to me that it needed a transformer in order not to make very bad things happen. So there I was, without a single fan.

On my way home today, I decided to stop on Emek Refayim for coffee and a visit to the little store with school supplies that Tamar showed me last week. Walking from the coffee shop to the little store, I saw three different fans sitting out on the street in front of what looked something like a hardware store. I picked a nice standing fan and was ready to pay for it and truck it home (a 10-15 minute walk) when they asked if I wanted one that was already put together or one that was in a carton. Turned out that these were "floor models" --or sidewalk models in this case. Thinking that a box would probably be easier to carry, I went for that option and the store owner even wrapped some plastic around it to improvise a handle. If you look closely, you can see said handle.

Then began the adventure of putting it together. Despite the patriotic Americana on the outside of the box, the instructions were all in Hebrew. Some of them required me to use the handy-dandy online dictionaries that Alan included in the "goodies" of this blog. At first I despaired at not having a screwdriver but then I remembered that I could use the pocket knife that Sarah S. gave me as a bridesmaid's gift! When I finished the assembly, I realized for the first time that this fan has an ingenious feature that I've never seen before: a built-in sleep timer!

Here's the new fan next to the one that jumps all over the floor:



Here's hoping for a more restful night!