house = meat locker

We awoke this morning to a very chilly home.

Actually, laying in bed with the kids, I didn't even notice because we have to keep a space heater going in our bedroom at night otherwise our room would ALWAYS be a meat locker. It is right above the garage, poorly insulated, you catch my drift. But after letting Trooper out, J. came in to announce that the furnace was not working and it was 57 degrees in the house. Brrrrrr.

We have old wiring and such so I figured it was just a circuit breaker or something easy like that, I mean why would a furnace that is less than 4 years old go out for any reason. It is practically new!! Of course, he had already thought of the circuit breaker thing and that was not the issue. Dang.

To top it off, it is Sunday and any respectable furnace guy is going to charge a billion dollars an hour to come over and look at it. First we called the guy who installed the furnace since it is, after all, still under warranty. He was walking into church and said he would call us back when he got out. So he did. When he told us how much it would cost an hour for him to come out on a Sunday, I thought how can this guy even call himself a Christian. I hope he went to confession. Whatever.

I perused the phone book and saw an ad that said 24-hour service at regular rates! and NO OVERTIME RATES EVER! and figured this was my guy. I had J. call him. He is conveniently preparing to leave on vacation, but referred us to a friend of his who covers for him when he is gone. I think this is code for "I'm really not going to come on a Sunday at regular rates, you fool! Call this dude and then we split the cash." J. calls furnace guy #3 and he is home sick with the flu. At this point, I am sure there is some conspiracy to get us to pay the above quoted billion dollars an hour to have someone look at our furnace. In defense of furnace guy #3, however, I will say that he did try to talk J. through some quick fixes on the phone. None of which worked, but he did put out substantially more effort than furnace guys #1 and #2.

In the end, we are just having to go without heat for a day. Luckily it is not sub-zero and we have a slight warm-up going on. The Muss and Boo are currently with J. and friends at a place that has all-you-can-eat pizza and ice cream and at least 50 million square feet of games and rides. They are not worried at all. Kiki is sick and home with me and is currently sleeping her baby cares away upstairs in the 1 warm room of the house.

Me, I am going to tie this entry up and eat some pizza myself while sitting on the sofa with a blanket and this laptop to watch that last Desperate Housewives episode I still haven't seen. Yeah, the after-the-tornado episode, I'm a little behind. I can't believe no one has told me what happened yet.