The first plows came through at 7 p.m.;
a dogsled would have been handy . . .
although I doubt there was anywhere to go.
Until the plow came through at 7, the neighborhood was deathly quiet.
No cars. No snowblowers. No shoveling.
Everything was muted, muffled, silent. I loved it,
but knew it couldn't continue.
Sure enough, after the plow came cars, snowblowers, shovelers . . .
the world was back to its noisy self.
I continued to make the dogs's area bigger during the day . . .
Daisy wanted to stay outside,
even though she couldn't see over the snowwalls . . .
. . . so she barked at the squirrels in the trees.
Cari sez: I've had enuff; I'm going in.
You stay out and bark if you want to.
Trust Daisy to find a sunny spot!
Oh, yes . . . about the furnace. It kept clicking on & off,
on & off. I remembered something about pipes needing clearance
(high-efficiency furnace has intake & exhaust pipes,
on the farthest side of the house from the front door, of course).
I also smelled natural gas in the house.
Kirk Nims, an ADT Cyberfriend, called me from Michigan
and told me that high-efficiency furnaces have
a computer chip that actually tests the aire.
If there isn't enough fresh aire to clear out the CO2,
it turns off. Which is probably what was happening,
but at least I knew I couldn't be CO2-poisoned.
THANK YOU, KIRK, FOR THAT PHONE CALL!
My neighbors to the north, Alan & Julie,
were actually shoveling out their driveway
(why? the street was't even plowed),
so I asked Alan to trundle thru the drifts and clear the pipes.
He did, I cleared the house aire of gas smell, and the furnace ran fine.
'Til later Tuesday night,
when it began doing the clicking on & off again.
Hmmmmm, I thought, there hasn't been enough wind
to make another drift . . . ah, but the ***hole neighbor
on that side of the house was out shoveling & blowing out his driveway.
I'll bet he clogged up my furnace pipes again!
(Note that I don't even know his name.)
After thinking about this for several hours
(hoping against hope that this problem would fix itself),
and finding out there was a wind chill advisory for Wednesday,
I figured I'd best gird my loins, put on some boots
and see if I could get the front door open,
slog through the waist-high drifts surrounding the house,
and clear out the pipes.
So there I was, 9:30 at night, boots full of snow,
fearful of getting stuck or falling over
(luckily, the shovel kept me upright), without a flashlight
but WITH a phone, just in case . . .
. . . sure enough, the pipes were again completely covered up.
Luckily for me, the neighbor's motion-sensitive lights came on
and I could see what I was doing;
I dug a big area around the pipes to keep them clear.
Then I slogged back, feeling like the Antarctica explorers,
without an accompanying dogsled.
And. I. had. heat. Again. If I ever see this neighbor,
I will pin back his ears about this.
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