adventures in momland

My mom's house (in Surrey) has had no heat since last weekend - it seems a little copper wire inside her furnace decided to take a break... literally! So for the past four days, she has been heating the house with the fireplace. Actually, trying to heat is more accurate: she never did get the place very warm, since the fireplace is a simple wood burning one in one end of the house. So to help heat the bedrooms (and, most importantly, the computer room/office!) she had plugged in a couple of electric heaters. Anyhow, I found this anecdote in my inbox this evening, and found it to be worth posting here!

When I came back from school, the temperature was only 56º , so waiting for the repair guy I decided to get the small heater in my "office" going, and in addition I plugged the long baseboard style one in the living room. A few minutes later, no heat coming out of it. I went to check upstairs... same thing! The I realized that both were plugged on the same electrical circuit and that the braker had popped. So I went down, figured out which one it was... but unfortunately it didn't want to go back in place... so no heat and part of the house didn't have any electricity either. Oh well!

Anyway, the repair man came to fix the furnace around 4:30pm - just a little something called a thermo-coupling - and my furnace was purring like a pussy cat. The temperature was begining to rise again. However I couldn't get the circuit braker to stay on so I waited for Olivier to come home. He arrived within the hour, and after brain storming about the matter, he decided to change the braker which seem to be brocken and replace it with a spare one I had. He called Garry F first to make sure the spare one I had was ok. He connected the wire and then flicked the switch... hurrah - for 1/2 a second and... pooofff ALL the lights were out!!! This time, the entire house had no power!

"Oh no!" said Olivier... "how could this be? What did I do wrong!?"

A little concerned myself, I decided to go out to check the neighbourhood... Would you believe the entire street - and more - had no light.

"I hope I didn't cause that" whined Olivier a little worried. He decided to call Garry F. again. Guess what?! They didn't have any power either! Now your brother was really shaking.

"No way" he said to Garry, "I can't believe it"... "I didn't do it, really, I didn't" Garry was laughing his gutts out when Olivier related the event! It was just a coinsidence!!! And what more, we had no light for over one hour, then the light came back on and Olivier was just about to flick the switch again... the lights went off again. Imagine if he had flicked it again at the same time, he would really be freeked out!!!

Meanwhile, the house was just starting to warm up... but no power means no heat! So back to square one - lets get the fire place going again!

It was a good hour again before the power was restored... I didn't wait, I was too hungy by then. So I toasted some bread on the fire, and made myself a nice roast beef sandwich with mayo and letuce, and toast with jam for desert. Oh ya, I was really smart... I had boiled water just before the power went off, and I put the exces boiling water in a thermos , so I was even able to have a to go with my toast! Oohoo!

T'was very nice around here... I had all the candles on again, the fire on... may be I'll turn the lights off for the rest of the evening!

TTYL

mom