A warm end to a cold week

Jenny and I are sitting here in our now-warm house. A few weeks ago, during one of the big cold snaps we had here, our furnace started to make a squeaking noise. Upon investigation, it turned out the noise was coming from the combustion chamber blower, which pulls cool air through the combustion chamber and then exhausts the hot air and gasses out the flue. It sounded like its bearings were going bad. We didn’t have time to have it serviced right away, and it was otherwise running just fine, so we figured we could call on a day when I was going to be working from home. Everything worked out this week, so I called on Tuesday to schedule a service person for Thursday.

Wednesday evening, we get home after work, and I hear the furnace start relay click on. Then I hear just a hum, but no combustion blower. If the blower isn’t running, the burner won’t start. I shut off the furnace at the service disconnect, and checked the combustion blower. It was completely seized. Hooray. No heat. Fortunately, Wednesday had been pretty warm, and our old house tends to hold its temperature pretty well, so things were OK that night. In the morning, I pulled down a small radiator-style space heater that was left in the house from the previous owners. I had never used it, but it looked to be in good condition. I closed the pocket doors so that our dining room was pretty well isolated. That’s where we set up our work-from-home offices. So I fired-up that little heater, and it worked to keep the room at a livable temperature.

The furnace repair guy was supposed to be there sometime between 10:30 and 13:30. He showed up at around 14:00 or so. He came down, looked at the furnace, checked the combustion blower, and said, “Yep. It’s seized. We’ll have to order a new one for you.” Um, yeah. I already knew that. That’s why I carefully explained to the person on the phone on Tuesday what the problem was, and also explained that it was going to need replacement because the blower is a single unit and did not have serviceable bearings. Thanks for listening to me saying all of that and then doing nothing. So furnace guy charges us $79.95 for five minutes of telling me what I already knew, and tells us that the part “should be in by tomorrow, if all goes well.” Gee. Thanks.

Following his departure, I got ready to go out to purchase a kerosene heater. I’ve been thinking for a while that we should have one in the house–we have had a few bad storms blow through the area this winter, and have been lucky to keep our power. If we ever ended up without power for more than a few hours during the winter, we would want to have some way to heat some local areas in the house. So, three hardware stores later, we had a shiny new kerosene heater and a two-gallon kerosene storage jug. Along the way, I also stopped at Staples to buy a new flatbed scanner, as my old small flatbed scanner kicked the bucket at some point over the past year or so, and I wanted to scan some old pictures.

After getting home and getting everything unpacked, I then had to learn how these heaters worked. I had never had one, and though I understood the basic principle of burning kerosene through a wick like a big lamp, I was not sure exactly how to make these things go (and stop!). So a few manual pages later, I was all ready to go. I followed the instructions to start it and let it run outside for the first fifteen minutes or so, in order to burn-off oil and manufacturing residues. This was a good plan, because that process smelled awful. After that fifteen minutes, I extinguished the heater and brought it inside. I let it rest again for another fifteen minutes, then restarted it. This thing has a great automatic battery-based starter, so it’s really easy–just depress the starter, then crank the wick up to the level of the starter, and that’s it! It practically lights itself. A little bit of trimming during the first 30-60 minutes of runtime, and it runs beautifully. It is clean-burning and emits little odor. In fact, I really only was able to smell anything right after starting it and right after extinguishing it. Otherwise, it appeared to burn cleanly and without odor.

Having that little heater made all the difference for the remainder of Thursday. It warmed the main floor enough that we could be pretty comfortable that evening. It provided a little bit of warmth to the second floor, too, which was good. We went to sleep with a ton of blankets and sweatshirts and all that. Jenny said it was like camping–in our house.

We awoke Friday to a temperature of about 50F in the bedroom, and falling. Since we were both going to be out at work all day, I decided to shut off the water and drain the system before we left for work. The predicted high for the day was around 34F, and we didn’t want to risk coming home to frozen or already-burst pipes. As I was draining the system in the basement, my phone rang. The furnace company was calling to see if I still wanted to do the repair, since it was going to cost around $340. I informed the person on the phone that yes, we really wanted to have heat again. Apparently, the service person had not noted that our furnace was completely out of commission, so the company didn’t think that this was urgent. Reminding them that it was, in fact, urgent, the person on the phone said that they could try to get it in this afternoon. If they couldn’t do this afternoon, the next day they were available was Monday. Fabulous. I told them that I’d check at work to see if I could take the afternoon in order to be available for them, but I would have to wait until I got to work to see.

Work was good, and allowed me to take the afternoon to work from home so that I could be there for the service guy. I called the furnace people, and they said they’d be able to do that afternoon, sometime after 13:00. Rock on.

I left work at around 12:30 and headed first to the strip district. I am making dinner for Valentine’s Day, and I wanted to get some steak for me and some (uncooked) shrimp for Jenny. I was also really jonesing for some sushi from Andy’s Sushi at Wholey’s, so it all worked out well. I was surprised to find the strip so busy, but I lucked into a parking spot that someone vacated right in front of me only a half-block away from Wholey’s, so that was awesome.

I got my sushi. I got good shrimp for Jenny. I got some great-looking steaks and pepper bacon for me. I also picked up some mushrooms to cook with potatoes and onions. Mmm. All good stuff.

I got home and got a call from the furnace guy shortly thereafter. He came and installed the new blower, and the furnace fired-up nicely and started to warm the house again. I had also started the kerosene heater to provide some assistance to the furnace in getting the house up to temperature again. It all worked out well.

Jenny and I had originally planned to have me pick her up after work, then head up to the mall to stop at the Windgate Winery store at the mall. Windgate Winery is a great little winery out in Indiana, PA. We’ve stopped at the actual winery in the past, but it’s a pretty long trip, and we just haven’t had time this year. The store at the mall carries all of their stuff, anyway–it just isn’t as much fun as a trip to the actual winery, parking amongst the vineyards and smelling all that good dirt smell and all that. We were out of wine at home, though, so it was time to re-stock. We were also going to get dinner somewhere at the mall, then head home. Well, with me not being at work, Jenny decided to take the bus home, then we’d go up to the mall once she got home. We headed up after she got in, but it was busy as hell. We picked all of the bottles for our case of wine, and then the guy helpfully offered to keep the case there for us, and we could grab it on our way out of the mall. Perfect! We started to walk over to Houlihans, but figured that line was long. We walked into Dingbats instead, and they had a 20-minute wait. I had forgotten that Jenny wasn’t a huge Dingbats fan, though, so we skipped out of there, grabbed our case of wine (nice guy at the store even let us out the back door so that we didn’t have to walk around the outside of the store), and headed down the hill to eat at the Creighton Inn. That was a much better choice.

Today, we woke up and I started to give Jenny some of her presents. On Thursday, when I was out to get the heater, I also stopped at Valos Candy (we need to get him a website! They’re up on Freeport Road in New Kensington/Arnold) to pick up candy. I also spent some time in the car ordering flowers for pick-up on Saturday morning from Arnold Florist. On Wednesday, I had stopped at a little shop in Oakland where a guy makes and sells jewelry. I picked up a set of bluish glass pearl earrings there that I really liked, and also picked up a set of gemstone and crystal earrings that featured real pearls and amethyst. So this morning started with the earrings. Then, while she was in the shower, I hid a box of candy under the pants she was going to wear. After I showered, I told her I had to run out to get something for the marinade for her shrimp, and that I’d be back in a jiffy. The special marinade ingredient, of course, was the bunch of pretty flowers that I had to pick up from the florist.

After all of that, we headed up to get some lunch at Ladles. Jenny wanted to do some popcorn and movie later, so we stopped at Golden Dawn on our way home so that I could get some real popcorn and oil–there’s nothing better than fresh-popped popcorn! It beats the microwaved stuff by a mile.

After we arrived home, I got some of the dinner stuff started by getting her shrimp into the marinade, peeling and cutting up the potatoes, cleaning and cutting the mushrooms, and chopping onion and garlic. Now we’re getting about ready for me to start dinner.

The menu:

• Marinated shrimp on the grill for Jenny–marinated with white wine, onions, rosemary, basil, pepper, and olive oil.
• Filet Mignon wrapped in pepper bacon for me.
• Potatoes and mushrooms in a skillet with onions, garlic, and rosemary. After everything is good and cooked, I’ll deglaze with a little white wine and reduce that to make a bit of sauce to cover the potatoes and mushrooms.
• Klondikes for dessert. 🙂

The grill calls–I need to get the charcoal started, get the shrimp onto skewers, and get the steaks wrapped in bacon. Yum.

jonathan