And Then I Stepped in Gum . . .

It's Wintertime . . . Um, Sort Of

Winter has come to Mobile. OK, for the rest of you, it's probably actually fall. It's in the 50s, and a little chilly. The leaves have finally turned (coincided almost exactly with Thanksgiving). And we decided to turn our heat on last night. When we did, however, nothing happened. The little LED of a fan on the thermostat turned, but no noise. Hm. Dave thought he'd heard it running before, but I wasn't sure. I think the only time we'd turned on the heat was at night, and we probably didn't notice that it wasn't working. So this morning I got to make the calls.

The heating guy just left, after fixing some wires, and we now have heat. Of course, we also have a house full of smoke and pierced eardrums. Apparently, the first time you run a heating system it burns off some oil or something, and smoke gets spread throughout your entire house, and all of your smoke alarms go off. Poor Ian, he kept pointing to his ears and saying, "Dop! Dop!" I couldn't figure out to turn off the alarms, so I opened all the windows (kind of counteracts the whole "turning on the heat" thing, but what else are ya gonna do?) and we spent a few minutes outside. It did indeed stop eventually.

Oh, and the heating guy pointed out that we should probably change our air filter -- you know, the one that is supposed to be changed every month and hasn't been changed since we moved in in July? How were we supposed to know? We had no A/C and radiant water heat in NY. So I looked like an idiot -- oh well, it's not the first time.

posted by Jennifer Morgan, at 3:01 PM