Hello and welcome back to the wonderful world of the Dogpound. As I covered in my last article, my trip to North Carolina resulted in an unplanned overnight stay without food or baggage. After that rough start, you would think things would settle down, but as you know from reading the Dogpound all of these years, that seldom happens. I finally got my tired body home and found the house a bit on the chilly side. I bumped up the thermostat a few degrees and went on about my business of unpacking and getting my life back to normal. I heat with propane, so the heat comes very quickly, but for some reason I still felt a bit cold. I could hear the furnace running but the thermostat was awfully slow in responding….so I bumped it up a bit more. A bit better but not as much as it should have been. Sensing there might be an issue I called my local heating and cooling guy. Fortunately, despite it being 4 p.m. in the afternoon, he was available and came right over. Interestingly enough, by the time he got here, the house was a toasty 74 degrees. I almost called him to cancel. I figured he would walk into the house, get hit in the face with a heat blast, and wonder what kind of heat wimp I was. Despite that concern, it proved out that I was correct in my initial concern. He said a sensor was dirty and was not able to read the correct temperature of the flame and went into a lockout. It shuts down for a while and then retries. After several attempts, he said I could wake up with the house at 32 degrees, or a sweltering 90 degrees. It was a quick fix, and I could now go to sleep peacefully knowing I was not going to freeze or burn up. Then, yes, there is more. The next day I decided I better get down to the gym and loosen up my bones after the long airplane trip. I walked outside and discovered my back right tire was half flat. Grrrrr! Fortunately, I have a portable air compressor (I have had it forever, and it has saved me a number of times) that I always carry in the back of the car. While the tire was being inflated, I called my local mechanic, hoping he could get me in since it was already after 4 p.m. and he closes at 5 p.m. The air pressure held until I got to the shop, and he pulled out a big 3-inch deck screw out of the tire. Yikes! They say things come in threes, so I am good for a while…. hopefully a long while!
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK
“Life is like riding a bicycle; to keep your balance you need to keep moving.” Albert Einstein
SMILES
A blonde bought a brand-new car and decided to drive a number of miles down the road to meet her friend. After spending a few days there she decided to return, and called up her mother to expect her in the evening. But she didn’t reach home in the evening and not the next day, either. When she finally reached home on the third day, her distraught mother ran and asked her what happened. She got out, obviously very tired from a long journey, and said, “These car designers are crazy! They have four gears for going forward, but only one for going back!”
Got to run. NCAA football playoffs are starting. As always, be good, do good, play safe and remember – life has no training wheels.
JR
