Call me Iceman

I'm huddled in the office with three shirts on, and a space heater, trying to stay warm as the heating company installs the furnace downstairs. It's cold. Like, I can almost see my breath cold.

As I am sitting here, I am going over the signs of hypothermia. I'm not shivering uncontrollably, so that is good. I'm tired from not sleeping well last night, and I remember from all the TV shows where people would get lost in the woods in the winter, you are not supposed to go to sleep. Specifically, I remember the Mork and Mindy episode where they are lost and are in some run down log cabin trying to survive. One of them is falling alseep while the other tried to keep them both awake. I don't recall the end, but I know they lived since the show went on for two more years.

Anyway, I have some water up here that I don't need to worry about getting warm, some M&M's to keep my energy up, and the computer. I think that is all I need today. If I remember correctly the guy on Survivorman used the same stuff in the woods of Canada. I could be wrong.

So my plans? Well, I brought my Play Station 2 up here, I can't read because I will think of how cold I am, and I'll probably check out MacWorld 2008 . I don't have a Mac, but I like Apple, and would like to get one some day. As many people my age, an Apple II was the first computer I ever used. I remember playing Lemonade stand on it at school and thinking it was the coolest thing ever. Then in high school we were allowed to take them home on the weekends and I would play Castle Wolfenstein. The graphics were extremely lame by today's standards, but I loved it, and would play for hours.

Sometime around sophomore, or junior year in high school one of my friends got an Apple IIc. I thought it was so cool. The floppy drive was built into the side; how awesome was that? We were playing a lot of adventure games back then: Examine room, Use blue key, you know how it went. We would really lose track of time with those games. Some even had graphics, by that I mean a static, huge pixel image that would take 30 seconds to load, but we didn't care. The one I remember most was the 'Menacing Werewolf'. I can't remember the game, but the 'Menacing Werewolf' would appear, and you would frantically type E,W,S and N while your friends would shout at you to get out of there. I never learned to type properly, but I can tell you were E,N,S, and W are without looking.

Well, I need to go put my feet on the space heater now. Have I mentioned it is cold in here?

Can I get some heat here?

As stated in a previous entry I do not like the cold. Well, I must have ticked off the Big Guy upstairs with that one. Our furnace has gone out. How fun is that? We had to pay overtime charges on Saturday for the HVAC guy to come out and say the furnace is in a bad state. It needs at least two parts, and maybe just a total replacement. Nice, huh? Perfect time too, right after the holidays.

So, I've spent the last two days thinking about that and trying to drown my sorrows in candy. All that did was make my stomach hurt. I'm still cold! Actually it is not too bad in here. I ran out to get some space heaters to help, and occasionally I can coax the furnace to work for a short time. The rooms close to the heaters are running about 67, but rooms further away, like our bedroom, are colder. Time to pull out the flannel pj's!

Tomorrow I'll get the call on the price of the parts and the price of a new furnace and figure out what we are going to do. The furnace is 20 years old, and who knows if those two things are all that is wrong. You can see which way we are leaning.

I'm going to run on the treadmill tonight to warm up. I may have to wear some warm running gear in the laundry room, it is the furthest from the space heater. At least it will be good practice for running in the cold.