Category: Life

Yesterday afternoon, the furnace repair person made yet another call and the furnace may finally be working as designed. Since Thursday, the central furnace has been working, but only when it could draw air from the house, which means we had to leave the front door to the furnace open, exposing the firebox. We gated it off with a child gate, but it was still unnerving to look down and see the jets. However, the furnace fire box is now shut up again, and drawing its air supply from the outside world. Although the weather is too mild to make much demand, the furnace seems to be turning itself off and on in response to the settings on the thermostat.

We had planned to take a trip to visit family in Santa Fe over the New Year’s weekend, but decided that we didn’t want to leave the house when we still don’t trust the furnace to continue working.

The furnace was supposedly repaired yesterday. The house was a toasty 70 degrees Fahrenheit when I went to bed last night. This was a good thing, because the outside thermometer was reporting minus 13 degrees Fahrenheit. This may have been the coldest night since we moved here. We just recently got this particular thermometer which is wireless and placed away from the house. Prior outside thermometers were usually up against the house and so reported slightly warmer temperatures. The lowest temperature I had previously seen here had been five below.

About two o’clock, I woke (or Dudley woke me) and had a bad feeling. Sure enough, the furnace fan was running, but there was cold air coming out of the vents. It was about 58 degrees inside the house. I knelt beside the furnace and the flame was out. The kitchen range burner were working so we had gas. I woke Jack because I couldn’t quite believe that the furnace had quit working again and I wanted independent confirmation. The only good news was that the outside temperature was eight above zero, so the warmer front was starting to move in. We turned on the space heaters and went back to bed. What else was there to do?

Jack was in a soup making mood yesterday. He put his first attempt (some sort of vegetable and tuna chowder) on the stove and we both forgot it about. I was in a room where the burning smell didn’t reach and Jack was downstairs. The pot was a mess, but I have manage to clean it using a trick my grandmother taught me: boiling water in the charred pot with a lot of baking soda in it. This loosens the burned gunk so you can get it off without a chisel. I’ve save a lot of pots over the years with this method, since Jack and I are both easily distracted. Curious, I looked up the chemical explanation using Google.

Since I don’t really care for vegetable and tuna chowder, I suggested he make potato soup for his second attempt and we found this recipe for Creamy Potato Soup. It was excellent.

unfortunately.

Saturday, Jack noted that cold air was blowing from the registers. He was able to arrange for a service call from the company from which we bought the furnace that morning, which resulted in the news that if we were lucky, they wouldn’t have to replace our whole furnace. As this is a relatively young furnace, bought seven years ago, we were quite bummed about it. Evidently, condensation had gotten into the works, and rusted out two major components. Our warranty was on shaky ground because we hadn’t been having yearly service calls that might have picked up the problem. The guy got the furnace working again with the warning that it was a temporary fix, but the furnace shut down again that evening.
Continue reading Keeping the Home Fires Burning….

The high today, briefly accomplished, was 18 F. Before I moved to the state, I shared the common misconception that Colorado is very cold during the winter. However, at least here along the Front Range, daytime highs of forty and fifty are not uncommon in the winter, and it seems really cold right now.

The horses seemed resigned to it. I looked out this morning and they were all standing in the light snow, with an inch deep layer on their backs. Their fur coats provide sufficient insulation to keep the snow from melting from their body heat. The first winter we had horses here at home it used to bother me that they were not using their nice, new (and expensive) barn when it snowed, but over the years I found out that you can’t pry them out of the barn when it is blizzarding or raining, so I suppose they have their own set of criteria of miserable weather.

Dudley drove me crazy this morning by requesting to go outside, and then scratching the door to be let inside again, because, you know, it’s like COLD outside. By mid-afternoon, he had evidently decided that it was not going to improve and I no longer felt like a doorman for a dog. Damn: he just scratched again.

An Australia Shepherd provides evidence one is never too old in my sister’s weblog Slice of Life.

CarHenge: as Jack said, what else is there to do in Nebraska?

Yesterday, Jack and I played Carcassonne, a game by the author of Settlers of Catan which involves laying tiles. The game setup and play is easy, except for the end scoring of the placement of farmers. This review of the game discusses the issue.