Speed of LifeThe Problem with FurnacesToday wasn’t too eventful. I woke up at a little past seven thirty this morning to a very,

extremely cold house. The first clue that it was cold in the house was that, well, I was feeling cold. The second clue was when my wife pulled enough of our bed’s blankets over to her side that my feet were suddenly exposed to the frigid air in the room.

The third clue wasn’t so much a clue as it was an explanation as to why it was so cold in the house. My wife explained as she was getting ready to leave for work that the furnace had stopped working and that I was going to need to call our landlord and get them to send someone to look at the furnace. Oh yeah, and she had already tried switching the furnace on and off, but it didn’t work and the codes were written on a notepad in the kitchen.

When she stopped talking and disappeared from the room, I rolled over and tried to get some more sleep.

The rest of the morning was dominated by my efforts to get the furnace fixed. No, I didn’t actually do anything directly to the furnace to fix it--that would be insanity. I did walk down to the basement to take a look, however, and upon inspecting the big square thing which I knew to be our furnace I confirmed that it wasn’t running and that there were some orange lights that were blinking on and off. Even in the world of computers, blinking lights usually mean something bad has happened.

So, my biggest contribution to the process was calling our landlord and asking if they could arrange for someone to take a look at our furnace. Oh yeah, and I did mention that it was really, really cold in our house.

In between reporting our furnace problems and sitting around waiting for someone to arrive to fix the furnace, I did manage to sit down and watch the latest episode of “The Clone Wars” with the kids. I have to say that this show is getting pretty good with the introduction of a new character named Savage Opress and lots of interesting intrigue.

Someone did eventually arrive and fix our furnace, so the house has gotten much warmer than it was this morning. As a result of the furnace issues and some other phone calls which slowed me down, I didn’t really get started until noon, which pushed lunch off until around one o’clock. I do have to confess that the highlight of my accomplishments may be washing the dishes and watching two hours of “StarGate: Atlantis” via NetFlix. This may sound obsessive, so I will point out that these episodes were parts 1 and 2 of a two-part story arc, and really how could I watch the first one without seeing how everything turned out in the end?

Theresa arrived back home around five o’clock with dinner from Little Ceasers and questions about why the sidewalk had not been shoveled. So, I threw on boots and my coat and shoveled for twenty minutes.

Tomorrow I’m pretty sure that the kids and I will go to church service, and then we’re going to eat the leftover pizza for lunch.

Something else that’s interesting is that before the furnace repair expert left he showed me a trick to try the next time the furnace stopped working. He explained that the when the furnace doesn’t kick on even though the pilot light is burning, we should try turning off the furnace,

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Speed of Lifeclosing the valve for the gas, and then reopening the gas line and switching the furnace back on. Or, in other words perform what those of us in the computer world refer to as a “Cold boot.”

See? I do know something about fixing furnaces.

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