PeterDavid.net

My thermostat doesn't work, so I have to turn on my heat manually so I know what it's like to wake up to a cold house. But, Gerald Ford? You sure you weren't smoking something you shouldn't have been last night.

Smoke - highly unlikely.

Ate something before bedtime is much more likely.

Been there - Done that.

Is it fixed yet?

Wally

Shaking hands with Gerald Ford?

Man, that's cold.

(More seriously ... hope the furnace is fixed soon. Not a fun thing.)

TWL

That's an utterly sweet father thing to do. :)

If you have a (oxymoronical) electric start gas unit, it may be the igniter, this I know about from personal experience. It's a quick fix if the service person has one handy.
As for the dream, perhaps you're just having an out of office experience. A pardon, mayhaps?
Stay warm, think nice thoughts, have a spot of tea.
later,
chuck elam

hmm...Just be thankful you live in a country where central heating and insulated houses are the norm.

>>shiver

Aw, what a good dad... reminds me of my mother, who used to cover me with heavy blankets at bedtime, then forget and come in a few hours later with more blankets, and then repeat... until I woke up at 3am nearly smothered under 7 layers of "love".
Hope the furnace is fixed soon!

Hmm ... you dream of shaking hands with a Republican, and wake up to no heat in the house? You must have sensed that something was wrong ... ;) (Seriously, I guess I have a generally positive impression of Ford - though I wasn't old enough during his presidency to have any first-hand awareness of it. Though, pardoning Nixon like that ...)

And, that is very sweet, the way you looked to your daughters. Good luck with the prompt repair of your furnace! (Too bad the winter weather came back - assuming you had similar warmth to what we had in the central part of the state at the start of last week; no heat would be much less inconvenient if it were still in the 60s out ...)

59 degrees is 'freezing?' I think not.

59 degrees is 'freezing?' I think not.

You're assuming he means Fahrenheit. Think Kelvin. :-)

TWL

>59 degrees is 'freezing?' I think not.

I'd agree with that. It's almost considered a balmy spring day here at that temperature. ;-)

59?

PFFFFFFFTTT.

Our thermostat is often SET at 15 C (59 F)

I had a similar situation happen after a holiday party last December: woke up to a very cold house, and sure enough, the furnace isn't turning on. I check the thermostat, I check the safety switches on the cover... I call the guy I've called before for problems with the furnace. After about ten minutes on the phone, we realize that the shutoff switch for the furnace got turned off: there were two girls playing with Lego in the general vicinity the night before, and the curiousity of a lightswitch must have gotten the better of them.

Whoa. The first time through I read it as you shaking hands with Glenn Ford! I was going to make a Superman analogy, but then I reread it. If we find out later that Ex-Pres Ford died around that time (heaven forbid) that would be really eerie.

Condolences. The wife and I had a furnace blow out a part last year. One day later we hit a three day stretch of fourteen to twenty degree nights. Thank God the house was built with a fireplace at both ends and double insulation. Still didn't save one of my kitchen's water pipes. Hope you guys have a better time with it.

If the temp on our thermostat drops below 68, our house feels cold.

Keep in mind that usually means it's in the 40s outside.

When that's happened to me, it generally means that I've run out of heating oil. Which usually means that the oil suppliers fouled up, as I'm on automatic delivery.

I had happen exactly what you did...turn on the furnace, it fires for a few seconds, then shuts off.

For what it's worth.

Wow. I feel like I've walked into a Python script:

"Fifty-nine degrees? That's a summer day! We used to *dream* of 59 degree nights!"

"Well, I say it was 59, but that was our body temperature. We had to go to bed with icepicks in our hands so we could chisel our legs out of the beds in the morning."

"You had icepicks? Ha! We had to use our hands to bust through the blocks of ice!"

"When I say 'icepicks,' I really mean teeth: we had to chew our way out of the beds in the morning!"

"You had teeth?!"

...and so on...

RLR

That is one weird dream. ... Wait a minute, where exactly in that post did the dream end and real life pick up?? I'm confused...

Aww.. you such a good dad. How was the early morning blood flow from your brain to your fingers to the story? And how was your afternoon nap? :)

59 degrees F is quite pleasant when you're outdoors, but when you're inside it's frickin' COLD! And I say this as someone with a programmable thermostat that lets it get down to 60 in the house while I'm at work.
Similarly, an 80-degree day is quite nice as long as the humidity isn't too bad, but 80 F inside is on the stuffy side.

PAD is secretly The Comedian.

Must, I say, MUST be a Dad thing. My Dad did it, PAD did it, and now I do it for Boo. (And for you Mockingbird fans out there, our last name is Scullion, not Radley.) Fortunately for us, we're on the second floor so we don't really need the heat too much. Now, earplugs for when they're slamming the doors until 2 in the morning, maybe, but not heat.

And hopefully I'll have us outta here by the time the summer comes when I REALLY need to worry.

59 degrees--please come visit us in Nome, Alaska, where the temperature today is -5 F with the wind chill! I welcome 59!

I remember when I was living at home with my parents our furnace died one year on New Year's Eve. We were all out celebrating at the time, and were too tired to notice that the house was colder than usual when we got back home, but by morning the windows were literally frosting over! (This was back when Toronto got REAL winters, the kind where the city would have to shut down for at least a few days each winter because of big snow or ice storms).

Sure enough, when I finally woke up at the crack of noon the next day I found myself covered in my parents' blanket in addition to my own, and they had been up most of the...er...morning dressed in layers of sweaters and their winter jackets and doing their best to find a repairman who would actually take calls on new year's day. We ended up spending the day in front of our fireplace sipping cocoa and curled up in our blankets reading, watching videos (this was before DVD days) or just talking. The repairman showed up with amazing timing just as we sat down for dinner.

Best New Years Ever.

PAD, you're a shining beacon of fatherhood that anybody would do well to emulate, including myself, now that my first little one has arrived.

Sorry. Just had to find the littlest excuse to tell the world. She's a Saint Patrick's Day baby, too! Appropriate. :P

-Rex Hondo-

I was waiting for someone to break out in Springsteen:

"Woke up this mornin', the house was cold.
Checked the furnace, she wasn't burnin'." :)

Well, Howard, someone did step up and start to write that -- unfortunately, they took two steps back before posting. Same old story, same old act...

TWL