Saturday, December 16, 2017

The Best Laid Plans

This was my second day off, and it definitely did not go according to plan.  The morning wasn't so bad.  I sewed a few more strips together, and by the end of the day I had 3 more ready.*  But I had to run out to pick up some groceries, and somehow things just never recovered.

I did send off one email related to the Fringe, since, incredibly enough, my project is still in the running for a site-specific slot.  More on that next week as things develop.  However, in the early afternoon my wife noticed that the water heater had stopped working.  I tried to follow the step-by-step instructions but nothing was working.  We called about repairs, but the earliest slot was Sat. morning.

They had asked me if the furnace was working, and I said yes, since I had remembered it being on a while back. So I went and looked, and in fact the temperature was dropping steadily.  I went down and looked through the manual and there was something about high pressure switches being stuck closed.  Then I got the run around, since apparently it was installed by a precursor to Enbridge that doesn't exist anymore.  Enbridge no longer is in the furnace repair game, so you're on your own.  I looked at the internet, but most of the solutions seemed kind of complicated.  In desperation, I tripped the circuit breaker a couple of times, and, amazingly, that worked.  I still wasn't able to get the water heater going, however.  I also figured that we ought to have someone look at the furnace, but at least it wouldn't be an emergency service call.

That accomplished, I went off to the library to pick up a book and to put in an interlibrary loan request.  I had to walk the entire way, which kind of pissed me off.  Then after dealing with the librarians, I waited for the bus back.  Since the buses were still so impacted by the poor road conditions, there was a ton of bus bunching and they were all late.  I was so squeezed on the bus going back, but I wasn't willing to walk it either.  So I was pretty grumpy, particularly as I needed to shovel again when I finally got home.  I have a feeling it's going to be a long winter.

I did make some cookies, and they taste ok, though they don't look right.  They spread out far too much, which may be due to the baking powder being too old.  So that was alright, though I was still pretty stressed about the day as a whole.  I guess my main regret is that I have really fallen behind on my reading, and also that I am not going to the gym, and I probably won't so long as I have to take boots on and off and crunch around in the snow.  I actually don't mind a colder winter if the sidewalks and roads are clear, but that doesn't look like it will be the case this year.

Anyway, I woke up about an hour ago and realized that the house was quite cold, and the furnace had failed again.  I tried the trick with the breaker, but it didn't work.  So it is another four hours or so until morning when I can call the HVAC guys, since this is clearly a problem that I can't fix.  I'll probably just go bundle up and try to sleep to conserve heat.  So unhappy right now.

* Even the sewing machine is starting to act up.  The thread keeps getting completely tangled underneath the cloth.  I switched to a different bobbin, which helped a bit, but basically I can't reverse stitch on the beginnings of jobs, as there is too much excess thread, only at the end.  It probably doesn't matter too much for these short pieces being sewn into strips, but I'll probably want to do something different for the longer stitching where I really do need to anchor the top.  Anyway, something else I don't really want to have to deal with right at the moment.

No comments:

Post a Comment