Furnace follies

K. woke me at 9AM today with the news that our heat was off. As it was snowing and she was shivering, I, the dutiful sweetie, struggled into bathrobe and booties and stumbled down to the basement to investigate the furnace. It was indeed a proper malfunction—resetting the system got me a few seconds of fire, but no more, and the little green error indicator LED was flashing. (Of course, the pattern of flashes wasn't listed in the book. When I called superlandlord Larry Funk to report the problem, I said, "It's supposed to flash six times, then some other number to tell me what specific error it is. But it's just flashing six-six-six." I paused, then whispered, "I think it's Satan.") The repairman was here in half an hour, on a Sunday morning no less; he told us he'd noticed on his way in that our flue had come loose, so the system was venting to the wrong place, and fixed it speedily. Gotta love small-town service.

After I went back to bed, I dreamed about our furnace. Rather, I dreamed I was at the Oscars, watching MyS's daughter Laura while MyS accepted her award (I'd already received mine, for some small technical achievement). Laura wriggled away from the front row, and I had to follow her down into the cavernous Academy basement, where Gandalf and I searched for her and were attacked by living skeletons that reached up from the dirt floor. When I found the furnace it was much larger than it really is, and was spitting three-foot gas flames from a vent on the side; the flames were licking at bits of wood and burning the bristles of a broom, but I couldn't tell if that was a problem or not. Gandalf released smoke-rings of gas to test the system's safety; they either burned as they flew, like luminous blue jellyfish, or crackled with veins of blue sparks.

I always have the best dreams when my sleep is interrupted, but it's not worth it.