The furnace adventure.

A couple of weeks ago on Labor day, Lori and I attempted to turn the heat on in our house. Allow me to clarify that last sentence. It was cold out and we tried to turn the thermostat up/on. Unfortunately, there was no response. Nada. Nyet. No heat. Which was disappointing….and meant that as a home-owner, I better find out what was wrong and fix it myself, or eat-it ($$$) if I call a repair-man.

Now to be honest with ya, my first instinct was to find someone to blame, which is a character defect of mine. (Maybe Rick broke it when we were out). Then I thought…maybe it was Lori, but then again, if I think about this long enough, 9 years of marriage has taught me better than to blame the old-wifey-sweetie. I don’t want any marital discourse over some crummy furnace problem (foreshadowing).

So, in order to diagnose the problem, one must break open our trap-door, which is hanging on with rusty old hinges, and then proceed to worm their way under the house into the dirty, dark, yucky crawl space. I nominated Lori. She nominated me.

My rationale behind nominating Lori is quite simple. She is much younger than me. Additionally, she is more flexible (from Yoga), and has narrower shoulders. Plus, she is not afraid of snakes and spiders. I detest both. I have nightmares about snakes. Lori is our designated spider person….meaning that whenever I find big-scary wolf-spiders in the shower I timidly yell “EEEK” followed by “Lori come get this +#&^---spider!” She then shows up, alas not as quickly as I would hope, and begins to talk pleasantries to the big-scary wolf-spider, making friends, and scoops it up into her hands.

The problem with me nominating Lori is two fold. One, she had to go to work fairly soon. (I had the day off from work) Second, I managed to piss her off. Furnace problems fall into that “guy category of problems”…..similar to cars, gutters, and bailing hay.

Lori is a Taurus, and they happen to be a bit stubborn on occasion. She also happens to not only have Italian heritage, but German as well. Where am I going with this? Yeah, ok, well, faster than you can say “Snoopy and the Red Baron” she has her boots on, a pair of MY old work-painter-pants, and is crawling under the house into the dirty, dark, yucky crawl space. Eventually, I joined her. (I had to make a decision of what to wear) Initially, I served as the flashlight holder and errand runner.

Fortunately, it did not take us to long to realize that the pilot light was off or extinguished. We thought, cool, all we have to do is to light the pilot. Unfortunately, our efforts proved futile. No luck. The pilot would not light... to be continued...