Come on Baby, Light My Fire

When I woke up this morning, my nose was all chilly where it poked out from under the nice warm covers. "Aha!" I said to myself. "It's starting to get pretty cold at night. Time to fire up the ol' furnace!" And thus I began the regular autumn ritual of utterly failing to get the god-damned pilot to light.

Normally, this would be the point at which I would start getting upset and swearing a lot and muttering under my breath about how I never wanted to be a homeowner, etc., etc. But, honestly, I'm actually feeling quite good about the whole thing, because I've at least managed to avoid a repeat of last year.

Last year, you see, we had a very abrupt cold snap at round about this time. One day it was nice and balmy, then suddenly, wham, the temperature dropped to the freezing point overnight. And that, of course, is when I discovered that my furnace didn't work. Needless to say, the cold snap snapped over a weekend, because every serious problem that requires service people coming out to your house invariably happens on a weekend. All in all, between waiting to get hold of the heating guys and waiting for them to get around to stopping by, I think I was without heat for the better part of a very chilly week. I eventually had to borrow an electric space-heater from a friend, just so I didn't turn into a popsicle during my sleep.

Anyway, the point is that, by checking on the furnace while the thermometer still reads "mildly chilly" instead of "bone-achingly cold," I've apparently managed to avoid a repeat of last year's experience, so, yay, me. I've also apparently managed to avoid the rush, because the furnace guy says he can be by tomorrow morning.

So, by this time tomorrow (unless something else goes hideously, horribly wrong, which is always a distinct possibility), I should once again be blessed with the miracle of central heating, thus ushering in the official start of the Season of Spending Large Amounts of Money on Propane. Sigh. I miss being a kid. This time of year was much more fun when I could think of it as The Season When We Might Get Snow Days, instead.