-- continued from Frigid (part 1) --
My dad has never even looked at my year and a half old furnace. I don't know what Mom expected him to tell me to do to fix it. But she handed over the phone and he came up with something. He told me to call my neighbor over to look at it. Dad also encouraged me to stay at home until I could get a repairman out to my house for a diagnosis of the problem. After all, the thing needed to be fixed. That meant someone needed to look at it and I could not very well pop back to open my door from 4 hours away.
My neighbor definitely deserves some kind of baked goods in appreciation for trying to rescue two ladies in distress from quickly dropping interior temperatures. He came over within about two minutes of my phone call. Guess what? He figured out right away (and without looking at the manual) how to open up the furnace and find its "pilot light." (Yay neighbor!)
Note to self: Newer furnaces do not have pilot lights. They have on-demand ignition. My furnace's on-demand ignition was lighting just fine. The fire stayed on for about 3 seconds, then it turned off. Half a minute or so later, the pilot went on again. Then it went off again and the process repeated.
The neighbor groaned, "Ohhh... I don't know if I can do anything with this." He opened another door to reveal a circuit board. "Yep," he confirmed, "It has a circuit board. I can't do anything. You'll have to call a repairman."
THAT is when I thought of my personal prodigal (who used to be my personal super-hero before he turned toward the forces of evil). If my personal prodigal were here and still serving the forces of good, he would peel out that circuit board, activate his superhero tools to figure out its problem and fix it. (He would also have a more flattering super-hero name.) Oh for the good old days! Alas, those days are long gone.
(Side note for disbelievers: Anne thinks that her dad would not have been able to repair the furnace's broken circuit board. She says repairing a circuit board is just way too hard. I disagree. That kind of repair might be too difficult for many, but I have seen her dad's super-powers at work and he could do it. He built and repaired circuit boards for a living when I met him, after all.)
I thanked my neighbor for his help, asked if I could bring some of my plants to his house in the morning, and let him go home. My next step was to call a local pet-friendly hotel. The last-minute price for a night's stay was very much more than I was willing to pay so I informed Anne that we were going to rough it for the night.
Before I called my mom to see if it was okay to come to her house, which was before she told me to ask for my dad's opinion and before the neighbor was called over to rescue me, I had told Anne to start getting her things ready to go back to school. I did not intend to return home after going to Mom and Dad's before driving Anne to meet her friend for their carpool back to the university.
By the time I was finished with the neighbor and the furnace, Anne had her things all ready to go. That left her free to help me batten down the hatches for the cold night ahead. I sent her to set up my small space-heater in her bedroom (my room has no door), start it going and close her door while I pulled out the plastic sheeting that I had not yet put up on my windows and called my mom to let her know what the neighbor had said.
When Anne came back downstairs, we covered all but three of my windows with plastic (One was so cold that ICE had formed inside of its glass!), let the dog outside one last time, changed into our PJ's and took the dog with us to bed in Anne's somewhat warmer (from running the space heater) bedroom.
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My dad has never even looked at my year and a half old furnace. I don't know what Mom expected him to tell me to do to fix it. But she handed over the phone and he came up with something. He told me to call my neighbor over to look at it. Dad also encouraged me to stay at home until I could get a repairman out to my house for a diagnosis of the problem. After all, the thing needed to be fixed. That meant someone needed to look at it and I could not very well pop back to open my door from 4 hours away.
My neighbor definitely deserves some kind of baked goods in appreciation for trying to rescue two ladies in distress from quickly dropping interior temperatures. He came over within about two minutes of my phone call. Guess what? He figured out right away (and without looking at the manual) how to open up the furnace and find its "pilot light." (Yay neighbor!)
Note to self: Newer furnaces do not have pilot lights. They have on-demand ignition. My furnace's on-demand ignition was lighting just fine. The fire stayed on for about 3 seconds, then it turned off. Half a minute or so later, the pilot went on again. Then it went off again and the process repeated.
The neighbor groaned, "Ohhh... I don't know if I can do anything with this." He opened another door to reveal a circuit board. "Yep," he confirmed, "It has a circuit board. I can't do anything. You'll have to call a repairman."
THAT is when I thought of my personal prodigal (who used to be my personal super-hero before he turned toward the forces of evil). If my personal prodigal were here and still serving the forces of good, he would peel out that circuit board, activate his superhero tools to figure out its problem and fix it. (He would also have a more flattering super-hero name.) Oh for the good old days! Alas, those days are long gone.
(Side note for disbelievers: Anne thinks that her dad would not have been able to repair the furnace's broken circuit board. She says repairing a circuit board is just way too hard. I disagree. That kind of repair might be too difficult for many, but I have seen her dad's super-powers at work and he could do it. He built and repaired circuit boards for a living when I met him, after all.)
I thanked my neighbor for his help, asked if I could bring some of my plants to his house in the morning, and let him go home. My next step was to call a local pet-friendly hotel. The last-minute price for a night's stay was very much more than I was willing to pay so I informed Anne that we were going to rough it for the night.
Before I called my mom to see if it was okay to come to her house, which was before she told me to ask for my dad's opinion and before the neighbor was called over to rescue me, I had told Anne to start getting her things ready to go back to school. I did not intend to return home after going to Mom and Dad's before driving Anne to meet her friend for their carpool back to the university.
 | |||||
| Ice formed on the inside of the window. |
When Anne came back downstairs, we covered all but three of my windows with plastic (One was so cold that ICE had formed inside of its glass!), let the dog outside one last time, changed into our PJ's and took the dog with us to bed in Anne's somewhat warmer (from running the space heater) bedroom.
-- To Be Continued --
Have you subscribed to the "A Writer's Blot?" feed? Blogger has a free feed service so that you can keep up on new posts. Use the subscription links in the right side panel to add Author Beth Durkee's personal blog to your feed.
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