Ah, the good old days. When something broke, we’d call the landlord. Now when something breaks, we realize WE’RE the landlords.
On Friday I noticed that the condo was cold. I looked at the thermostat and it said the inside temp was 62°. A little investigation by Julian revealed that the igniter for the gas furnace wasn’t igniting. The water heater and gas dryer were working fine. Naturally, this happened Thanksgiving weekend, when most self-respecting furnace repair folks are drinking mai tais on Maui. Puget Sound Energy sent over a gentleman today. Unfortunately, he’s not licensed to do any repairs and the utility’s techs who are don’t work weekends. One outfit that supposedly makes weekend calls wants $500 up front before walking in the door. Another repair outfit can’t fit us in until December 3. So we’ll shiver for at least one more night.
We’ve had a little experience with heat-less homes, mostly in conjunction with power outages. We had two ice storms when we lived in Greensboro that knocked out power for two days each. We piled every last blanket and comforter in the house on the bed and slept fully clothed. The second ice storm happened about a month before we moved to Seattle. We resorted to burning Julian’s father’s old business records, since we didn’t want to move them. One year’s worth of paperwork kept us warm for 15 minutes. The first night of that outage we heated Lean Cuisines for dinner in the gas grill.
With luck, I’ll come home to a warmer house tomorrow.
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