Brr...It's Cold In Here!

Sunday morning, as we were getting ready to leave the house for church, our carbon monoxide detector started going off. Josh and I looked at each other with rather confused faces. As Josh went to check things out, it started saying there was a fire. Knowing full well there was no fire in the house, we decided the batteries must be dying. We replaced the battery, all was silent, so off we went to church.

When we got home, I could hear the carbon monoxide detector beeping again. As I opened the door from the garage to the house, we could smell a bit of gas. Lovely. I should probably stop here to note that twice during the week last week, the heat would kick off and not come back on until Josh went downstairs to manually flip a switch and get it going again. I called the rental agency, who in turn, called their heating and plumbing guy to come out and see what the deal was. He came, he looked around a bit (not at the part that was broken, but since I had no idea what Josh was talking about to begin with, I didn't realize he wasn't looking at the right part), and told me that our heating system was so old and simple that it would either work or not work. And since it was working, there was nothing wrong with it. He then bid me adieu and was on his way.

Back to Sunday. So, Josh turned off the heat, called the rental agency, who called the same guy, who called us back and said there was nothing he could do since it was a Sunday and he'd send someone out Monday. Until then, we opened a bunch of the windows, turned on the fans, and prayed that none of us would get carbon monoxide poisoning. (Needless to say, neither Josh nor I had a good night's sleep on Sunday.)

Monday morning, a different guy than the original guy came out, took a look, and found that there was a crack in the pipe, and that's where the gas leak was coming from. And, of course, it was in that one spot that the first guy never checked. Guy #2 (who was much more personable than the first guy) determined that the whole thing needed to be replaced. So, at 9am Monday morning, our heat was turned off as he began to work. At some point G2 realized that the new unit was smaller than the old one so he had to go back to Anchorage to build a part that would properly hold the new unit in place. He left, around 10:30 or so and didn't come back until 1pm. Keep in mind we're without heat this entire time.

After getting back, he went right back to work and found that he needed yet another part. He said he knew he was going to need this part, but until he actually put it all together he didn't know what size he was going to need. Once he determined the size he needed, he left again, to go buy the part. Sometime close to 4 he was finished and we once again had heat. Yep. Seven whole hours without heat. In January. In Alaska. Fantastic.

Praise God it happened on a day when Josh was home from work so he could deal with it all, and it happened on a day that was relatively warm. I think the temperature peaked around 27degrees that day, so not bad. (Especially when you consider that every day since it has not made it to the double digits.)

SO, how did we keep warm during the day you may be asking? We each had our own methods of coping with the cold.

Josh chose to make a fire, and tend to it all day.

(He got a little upset that I chose the moment he decided to burn our paper recycling

instead of the firewood to take a picture.)

Deacon and I decided to snuggle under a blanket and read books.
(Having the cat on our laps certainly didn't hurt either.)

Zeke's plan was two-part.

First, he decided that eating would be a good thing to do.

After packing on a few extra ounces, staying in constant motion

was how he beat the cold.
(He's jumping in this picture - hard to tell when it's a still shot.)

And there you have it. A great way for us to spend Josh's 4day weekend. I can hardly wait to see what President's weekend holds for us.