Thermodynamics 101

A great advantage of living in Houston is that you never has to deal with snow, icing, or other annoyances associated with cold weather. Instead, you have to deal with a lot of heat and humidity (why do you think we call this place H-Town?!?!)

Unfortunately, our main Air Conditioning unit decided that mid-August is the best time to start leaking, so we had to turn it off. Now, you may think we suffocated and died a most muggy and terrible death, but we had science to keep us cool while we waited two days(!) for the AC repairman (turns out he's a pastor). Let me enlighten you.

Our living room is located at the bottom of a straight stairway. My room, which contains a window AC unit, is located directly at the end of the staircase upstairs. The Window AC unit is directly opposite the entry to my room.

Thanks to thermodynamics (hot air rises, cold air sinks), any cold air the main AC unit routes to my room goes out my room and down into the living room, so I always close my door (consequently, the draft underneath the door is insane). Usually this effect is a nuisance, since I always have to go upstairs closing doors after my parents, but these last couple of days the effect has been quite a blessing!

While our main AC unit was out cold (get it?), we used my room's window AC unit to cool down the living room by leaving open my door's room and letting nature take care of bringing the cool air down to us. 

BAM! AC problem solved!