baby it's cold outside

So as those of you who follow my Twitter stream may be aware (and if you aren't, why not, at the very least there are links to some very detailed Lego pictures as well as my thoughts about creamy pumpkin soap--not soup, soap) the furnace in our house--that is to say, the house we are renting, not a house we actually own, thank god--made it apparent that it was not up to actually producing any meaningful degree of heat right at the end of last week. Unfortunately, this was on Friday night, past the point that any furnace repair company would deign to come check things out, freezing temperature and young children be damned. So this weekend was one of piecemeal heating solutions, consisting of strategically placed space heaters and many layers of Cosby sweaters. One good thing is we discovered there was actually a second furnace up on the second floor (who knew?) which had shut off for the past two years but did actually work, and was enough to at least heat the kids' bedrooms overnight, though not sufficient to heat up the rest of the house, where everything else (TV, toys, master bedroom) is. So, southerly latitude nonwithstanding, it's been pretty cold up in here.

One of the furnace people who came by to inspect the unit told us that the problem was that whoever had installed this furnace--and it's brand new, installed just a few months ago--put the whole unit in wrong, something with it needing to be leveled correctly something something condenser drainage something something reinstall the furnace ONE MILLION DOLLARS. And then, for some reason, some other guy came by today with the landlord, tinkered with something else apparently very minor, and now we...kind of have heat again. So I'm not really sure how he fixed it or what he fixed or if he even fixed anything at all or if it's going to last, all I know is that I no longer have arctic puffins roosting in my bedroom, and I'm no longer worried that my kids are going to run headfirst into the space heater and get Waffle Face. So that's good.

(Also, if you followed my Twitter stream, you would have seen the alarming pictures of me trying to make a brisket--yes, ME, I know!--which actually turned out pretty well despite best efforts to simultaneously cause massive conflagration as well as indigestion. Rest assured that though the meat looks strangely darkened around the edges in the middle photograph, that is merely an artifact of Hipstamatic, not what it actually looked like; I do love my family and want them to live.)