So okay, last Sunday morning papa was looking like he was going to take a circular saw to a piece of the closet downstairs, in other words, chop up a piece of the house, so Monday morning the house got even. It started with a subtle gas smell in the basement in the morning. Papa kind of noticed it, but thought it wasn't too bad. Then mommy went downstairs to work, and she said she smelt gas and it was giving her a headache. In the meantime, papa's got a load of laundry in the washer and one in the GAS dryer. Uh oh. So he called the gas company and a guy showed up 15 minutes later with this cool device that sniffs gas in PPM (parts per million) and guess what the guy found? TWO gas leaks, one at the dryer connection and one in the water heater thermostat control. But that's not all. He also saw that the dryer's lint line was stuffed up and was blowing lint back into the laundry room, and probably carbon monoxide (that explains a lot) and he said that we shouldn't use the dryer til the vent gets cleaned. Anyway, he went away and papa went to the laundromat to dry the two loads of wet laundry. But the wierdest thing is that it still smelled like gas in the basement. Then papa started looking really closely at the furnace and noticed it was trying to come on, but wouldn't. Then he took out the ignitor (an electrified iron heating element) and was poking it with a multimeter and he figured out that the ignitor had a hairline crack in it which killed it. So then he called Laurie because 18 years ago she had an ignitor go out and did she remember where she got it? Right. He called Sears and they didn't have one but offered to order one, but he just ordered one himself cuz you can get anything on Amazon, but we didn't know when it was going to come, and it was 40 degrees outside and the house was getting down to under 60. Hey, says papa, we've got a gas fireplace. So he lit the fireplace and put a fan on the mantle to blow the warmed air toward the cold air return, and he turned on the furnace's fan, even though the heat in the furnace didn't work, the fan did. And we were able to heat the house that way, though not incredibly well, but we didn't freeze. On Wednesday the new ignitor showed up and 10 minutes later it was in and the furnace was lit and we were warm. So papa was telling me (Willie) all this in the kitchen and he was leaning on a corner of the kitchen counter and suddenly the counter went SNAP and the seam between two big slabs kinda cracked a little. The house definitely knows something is up. And I won't even bring up Mommy lighting a kitchen towel on fire. Luckily the smoke alarm didn't immediately activate. On Saturday I made myself some chicken nuggets, and I put on some cayenne pepper--well some hit the hot pan directly and for the next hour everybody was coughing and spluttering and having weird reactions. Hmmm, maybe I should use more next time.
It's winter break and so far we've been playing Magic and spinning bears from the fan and watching papa make a fool of himself over his football team, who happened to win this week, but they won't next week, so then we'll put up some video of him stomping on his jersey after they lose. it's very amusing.
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We scored another set of buckyballs. I now have two sets of gold after trading my original set of silver to Willie, who now has 3.
Willie tried to make a snub dodecahedron with all 3 sets but it collapsed on itself. he should stick to small stuff like this.
I (Teddy) was helping kindergarteners build gingerbread houses and I made my own extra chock full of sugary goodness. Hey Willie, want some?
Do I? Who do I have to kill? Of course I do. What do you got? Did you say sugar? Mike n ikes? Marshmallows? Chocolate kisses and chips? Gummy bears? Sour worms? Frosting? YUMMY!
SNARF SNORG INHALE CHOMP (Ow, that was my arm).
Not enough candy--must have MORE!
This isn't a piece of paper--it's a rare piece of paper. No, you can't have it--it's mine! MINE I SAY!
The bears are all terrified of the chicken man. Chicken man? Who is the chicken man that these otherwise fearless bears are so scared of?
Behold--the chicken man! Despair at his terrifying visage. Speaking of terror, we finished watching T
he Lord of the Rings trilogy for the THIRD time. Not in a row, and not all once--we'd be sitting in front of the TV for 12 hours straight if we did that. Hmmm, that gives me an idea...
Copyright 1997-2010, The Berman brothers, Willie and Teddy. All rights reserved.
