Our Lady of Perpetual Hell

Okay, so I get home tonight (finally–after having crop-dusted over hill and dale across Southwestern Ontario, shopping for living room furniture on the way home from work) and open up the freezer to take something out to bbq for dinner tonight and–W!T!F!–it looks like it has hailed in my freezer. There’s half-frozen water icelets everywhere and a lotta stuff feels only half-frozen. Befuddled, I empty the freezer into the sink, lamenting over how it’s too damned bad I hosted Father’s Day dinner last weekend, since it appeared that I would have enough unthawed steaks and chicken breasts and rack of lamb to do it (again) this weekend. So much for all those great sales I took advantage of over the past couple of weeks. Fucksakes.

I go get an armload of towels to sop it up.

And notice the front plate of the furnace is off.

Now, this week has been a mite chilly. And a couple nights ago I tried to turn the gas furnace on for the first time since moving in and found that there was no heat coming up through the grates. The blower was blowing but it was blowing chilly air up into my furrowed brow as I stood over the grate, perplexedly looking down at it… as if I thought that if it could see my disappointment it would right itself. Well, I knew that my new gas account was up and active (I should know, since I work for the fuggin gas company !!). After all, I have a gas water heater, too, and there’s been no shortage of hot water since I moved in at the beginning of the month. So all I could conclude was that there was certainly gas coming into the house but it wasn’t getting any further than the water heater. Some valve must be closed or the furnace’s pilot light must be out. Which is fine and dandy and prolly easy to fix if you aren’t ascairt of blowing up your new house. Which I am.

So this sounded like A Job For Dad!

In the meantime, I would just sleep in socks and nestle in between the feather bed beneath me and the duvet on top of me. All cozy and warm, no biggie.

Anyhow, when I discovered Dad had been here today, I gave my parents a call to see 1. why the front plate of the furnace was still off, and 2. if they were aware of a power outage ’round here.

1. Dad couldn’t find the pilot light (this is significant, since my Dad has dealt with gas furnaces his whole adult life, so if he couldn’t find it, sure as shit I wouldn’t've found it) so I will hafta call the gas company (my gas company… the gas company I work for, that is) and have a service call to show me where the frickin pilot light is. 2. Yes, the power had been off while they were here. And now I had a freezer full of unfrozen or half-frozen meat.

*sigh*

But all of that is worth it for this, which I snapped after having cleaned up the freezer and gone out for a walk to clear my head…

BBQ at my place this weekend.