Those whacky kids

Yesterday, The Mrs. ran off to the grocery store in the morning because the whole world thought we were going to have a massive, massive snowstorm that would paralyze everything again. And we were out of celery.

The Childrens and I sat downstairs in the basement watching TV and eating popcorn, which is what I call "parenting". About an hour and a half later, the dog started barking like crazy, and I said, "Oh boy - sounds like Momma's home!" The Childrens immediately ran upstairs. I sat on my butt in the basement eating popcorn. We were watching Alice in Wonderland on TV, and I don't have a Tivo or ReplayTV or DirecDVR or anything that would let me pause live TV. Plus, if I went upstairs, The Mrs. would probably make me unload the groceries.

A little while later, HannahC came down. She looked a little confused, but she just sat down next to me and started eating popcorn and watching TV again. The dog was still barking, and MaxieC had not returned. I asked HannahC, "Was that Mommy?" She replied, "No."

"Who was it?"

"I don't know."

So I ventured upstairs to investigate. There, to my surprise, I found a man standing in the hallway looking worried. FreddyC was barking and jumping up on him, trying to lick him, and MaxieC was throwing everything he could pick up at the guy, which, at the time, was The Mrs.'s slippers. There were other various toys lying around the guy's feet.

I corralled the dog and the boy, and I determined that the man was here to fix the furnace. We decided to fix it rather than replace it as the estimate for replacement came in between $10k and $15k and involved opening up the walls to add more vent pipes (having a combined furnace/hot water heater means there isn't enough air plumbing to go with a separate furnace and water heater). He replaced the pressure relief valve (which had been refusing to hold pressure and was dumping water all over the floor whenever the burner came on), and in the process discovered that igniter had mostly consumed its sparking electrodes and was destined to fail shortly. So now that's fixed, too. He was the same guy who fixed the water tank circulation pump that died in our first week here. He told me we'd be seeing a lot of him.

I gotta figure out how to keep The Childrens from opening the front door when someone rings the bell.

The snowblower saga continues - I have discovered that for $500 less than the snowblower I selected, I can get a 42" snow blower that mounts to the front of my precious lawn tractor. I had originally dismissed this idea because I though you needed a front power take-off to have one, and the lawn tractor plow blades seem to be a big waste of time. (I've watched neighbors attempt to use them quite a bit, and it seems to be no faster than shoveling. Possibly even slower.)

If I talk about snowblowers enough, maybe I'll get some decent context-sensitive ads instead of public service announcements. The individual posts already have OK ads, but the top page doesn't. Apparently, chicken mummifying gear isn't a big draw for the advertising dollars.