A quick update before bed
Kasia December 21st, 2008
Mmm, where to begin?
The car, of course. The car.
Well, it wasn’t cheap, and Canuck and I were initially of different opinions as to whether to repair or replace. However, we agreed that we’d seek my father’s input – he’s dealt with a lot of car issues in his time, and we both have a high regard for his opinion. He advised repair, under the circumstances, so we’ll be hoping that Sue the Blue Subaru limps along for another year or so or until a little Clamuck appears, whichever comes sooner. (I can suffer through driving around Detroit in 85-degree-plus sauna heat with no air conditioning, and in fact have done so for a couple of summers now, but I’m not making a baby deal with that.) And Dr. Mabuse – in response to your comment…I know it’s hard to believe, given their fiscal situations, but if the Big Three are giving away free cars to random Detroiters, I haven’t heard about it yet… :-p
In other delightful fiscal news, you can imagine how pleased I am to report that my stove seems to have a slow gas leak. I smelled gas in the kitchen this evening after my parents left. “Hmm,” thought I, “that smells a lot like gas. It’s been an awfully long time since I smelled it, but I’m pretty sure that’s what I’m smelling…”
So I ventilated the kitchen for a bit (in five degrees above zero, that’s no fun) and then checked again. Just to make sure it wasn’t some little glitch. Nope – still smelled it, and it seemed to be coming from a stove burner. Hadn’t been using the stove, mind you, but that’s where it was.
Called Consumers Energy (I was a little embarrassed to have the gas guy come out when I was wearing candy-patterned fleece pajama pants, but hey, they were warmer than jeans would’ve been) and waited for the tech. Nice guy. He couldn’t find a leak big enough to set off his detector, but he smelled it too, so he popped the top off the stove and looked underneath.
One of the burner connections was taped.
Nice.
I don’t know much about electrical tape and gas stoves, but I don’t think electrical tape is rated for gas stove burners. Maybe I’m wrong. But he didn’t seem to think it was an especially good idea either…
CE guy turned off the gas to the stove and went on his way – I wished him a merry Christmas and gave him a little box of chocolates I had around. Figured it’s a flippin’ cold night and he could use the calories; and like I said, he was nice. It’s got to be a rotten job to have the night shift on, and he had to go back to his truck to get a wrench to turn off my gas because it was on so tight.
Isn’t it funny how, when your stove isn’t working, all the things you have in your fridge that require the burners or the oven just call your name? I had bought some brie and canisters of croissant dough, and I have butter and brown sugar in the house – I was just drooling over the prospect of baking that up, but not really feasible with no gas (and not worth the risk of blowing the place up anyway). So I had pre-made rice pudding for dinner – not one of my more nutritious meals, but I think I’ll survive, don’t you?
Anyway. Canuck did some quick online browsing on stoves and found some possibilities. He’s going to do some research tomorrow and the next day, and hopefully we can buy the stove this weekend after he moves here Friday.
Yes, Friday!!! I know I just saw him today, but I can hardly wait for him to be here full-time! I’m taking a Greyhound from Detroit to Chatham on Christmas Eve morning, and am spending Christmas Eve and Day with him and his mother. Then on Friday, Boxing Day, we rent a U-Haul, load up his stuff, drive here, and that’s it! Wow. It hasn’t been easy, but it’s rare for something to be easy that’s also worth having.
More tomorrow…I am going to snuggle down in bed and rejoice that I have heat, fleecy jammies with candy patterns, flannel sheets, and two big lumps of cat flesh to give me extra KTUs (that’s Kitty Thermal Units, if you didn’t know) on such a bitter cold night. I can’t imagine being homeless on a night like tonight, or even with shut-off heat. If you can spare a prayer or two for everyone who is without a home and heat tonight, I think it would be well worth saying.
Much on your plate, but the GOOD far outweighs all the annoyingly bad things…your happily ever after is just around the corner!
You and your furry little friends sleep well, sweet Clam!
Since I seem to (inexplicably) be awake at 12:42am I thought I’d check in on my sweetie’s blog. Lo and behold I find a new post
I guess in light of the stove issue, it’s a good thing that we decided against replacing the car last week, eh? It just reminds me who really is in charge of these things and how He always looks out for us (even while simultaneously giving us challenges to work through).
Kit – your comment put a very big smile on my face, thank you!
Yes, prayers (& bibles) do make rather good kindling . . .
Gas leak. That ain’t good. Always scared the hell out of me back in SLC (my unit was ancient and horrendously un-maintained). It’s really damned stupid that the utilities haven’t gone over completely to electric. Would make sense in so many ways.
That sucks about the stove, although I don’t agree with JW about going all electric. It’s very nice to be able to heat the house at least a little bit when the electricity goes out, or to be able to cook your food.
As for electrical tape, the plastic on that’s at least as durable as the plastic coating the wire to begin with, so if it’s acceptable for the wire to be there, probably fine for the tape to be there, as long as they did an adequate job of taping.
Oh, and a challenge — should you choose to accept it:
There have been a lot of blog postings about things wedding-related. My challenge to you, to help prepare you for this sacrament which will change your life forever, is to — from now until the day of your wedding — post once a day something about your fiancé (why you love him, what characteristics you find particularly endearing, etc.) Something positive, and something about this man whom you are about to give your entire self to. I would also recommend this to the Canuck, to do on his blog. Even if it is only a sentence right before bed when you are about to pass out, to help focus not on the stress of the day-to-day and the last minute details, but to re-focus yourselves, each day, on the reason for all the plans.
Go!
It’s really…stupid that the utilities haven’t gone over completely to electric. Would make sense in so many ways.
Well, yes and no.
First off, electric power has to come from somewhere, which means (a) more infrastructure, and (b) more coal being burned (or, in Canada, more radioactive waste being created). Right now most of our electricity comes from coal, which is both dirty and a finite resource.
Second, AFAIK electric stoves do not run on a standard voltage and plug, so every home that is currently set up for gas would have to have rewiring done. That’s a massive undertaking.
Third, some people really like gas stoves – they’re more responsive and thus easier to cook with, and (super big bonus) you can run them even in a blackout. All you need is a match. OTOH, if you’ve got an electric stove, if the power goes out you’re not cookin’ ANYthing.
It is kind of scary to think about gas, but the odds are significantly against anything serious going wrong.
[...] 22, 2008 in Uncategorized In a comment over at my sweetie’s blog, Jaibee set out a challenge for both of us: There have been a lot of blog postings about things [...]
As for electrical tape, the plastic on that’s at least as durable as the plastic coating the wire to begin with, so if it’s acceptable for the wire to be there, probably fine for the tape to be there, as long as they did an adequate job of taping.
Well, except that the tape isn’t on wire. It’s on the metal pipe that feeds the gas to the burner. And since gas smell is escaping from the burners, I’m guessing that either it’s not adequate to begin with, or they did a craptacular tape job…
Don’t get me wrong – I haven’t had anything worse than a gas smell as of now, so apparently it’s not leaking badly enough to have been a fire hazard when I’ve used my stove and oven over the past 2.5 years. I just think it’s…um…sub-optimal?
And Kit – your comment put a smile on my face too…
I guess in light of the stove issue, it’s a good thing that we decided against replacing the car last week, eh? It just reminds me who really is in charge of these things and how He always looks out for us (even while simultaneously giving us challenges to work through).
Quite right.
Well, you’ve gotta burn something, if for no other reason than that fires are cool to stare into. (Shades of Beavis and Butt-head here, I’m afraid. Fire! Fire!) But we’ve got a hellacious amount of corn out there in the big dumb Midwest that’s just itching to be turned into fuel instead of syrup. AgSec Henry Wallace, back in the big bad New Deal, foresaw this. He called it the Joseph Plan. An ever-normal granary. This county can sustain itself on its own pproducts. We have no need to suckle anymore at the black and tarry teat that is Mideast oil. When it dries up, so will the region, and we shall reign triumphant.
But we’ve got a hellacious amount of corn out there in the big dumb Midwest that’s just itching to be turned into fuel instead of syrup.
Beg to differ on the promise of ethanol, for the following reasons:
1) Large-scale demand for corn fuel will radically alter the food markets. Why should a farmer grow corn, wheat, or rice for food if he can grow corn for fuel and make more money?
Now, for the average middle-class American, paying an extra premium at the grocery store isn’t a make-or-break kind of thing. It’s an annoyance. Maybe you don’t splurge on something else. But for people who are really, truly poor, it can make the difference between eating and not eating. That is the most serious moral issue I am aware of with agriculture-based fuel.
2) Does the word “drought” mean anything to you? One, maybe two big ones and we’re pooched. Isn’t that prospect a bit daunting?
He should do so because it is good for him, for his neighbors, and for his country. It is quite possible to ease toward a sort of Third-Way amalgamation of libertarian and socialist policies in this country. It’s been done before and ’twill be done again.
As for drought . . . you’re living in the past. Clean your 20/20 hindsight spex. After a few rough patches we finally got this fully functional industrial democracy up and running. We can ship water from point A to point B easily. Remember Physix 101 4 Dummies, Polax & Inbred Jews: matter is neither created nor destroyed, or something like that. Anyway, we have all the water we need.
I suggest you read “Cadillac Desert” by Marc Reisner (http://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-American-Disappearing -Revised/dp/0140178244/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1 230073658&sr=8-1) for some illumination regarding water issues. While it is true that, on average, ‘we have all the water we need’, that water is not distributed evenly across the surface of the earth (or even the continent). Yes, we can ship water from point A to point B. What we cannot do is ship that water easily. The infrastructure required to ship the water is difficult, time-consuming, and expensive to build and the amount of power required to operate said infrastructure (for example, to pump the water over or through a mountain range) is enormous. To provide one example: the California State Water Project alone, which ships water from northern to southern California, consumes as much electricity as is generated by one nuclear power plant.
I knew Canuck would bring up Cadillac Desert, and I agree with him. Remember that to ship anything you’re using either fuel or electricity – there’s no guarantee that you’ll have a net gain of energy from such an endeavor.
Second, as for why Farmer X “should” grow the less-profitable food crops rather than the more-profitable fuel crops, you’re missing some rather important points:
#1 – It may be better for his neighbor and his country, but if it poses hardship for his family, I submit Farmer X is going to take care of his own first.
#2 – If the government endeavors to coerce him into doing what he doesn’t want to do vis-a-vis his livelihood, we’ve just trumped the Declaration of Independence and reversed the political structure of this country. The government derives its authority from the citizens, and exists to serve the citizens. NOT the other way around.
If, taking another tack, we attempt to persuade him via, say, subsidies (which violate a host of treaties we’re a party to), you and I are paying those higher food costs anyway. They’ve just been shifted from the tab at the grocery store to tax deductions.
In other words: There’s no free lunch, kiddo. I’m as keen to get off of Mideast oil as anyone, but it’s not as easy as you want to make it seem.
Oh, c’mon. Didn’t you two ever see Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory? The Mike Teavee machine scene?
(am completely doing a total nonsequiter here ’cause I’m tired and full of pizza. hey, shouldn’t you two lovebirds be at church or something right about now?)