Brrr!

Our furnace has been making a strange noise for a while.  Sometimes it sounds like a truck has hit the house, a loud bang that startles me badly.  So Randy called the landlord.  "Change the filter," she said.  We had already done that, but we put in another new filter.  No change.  This past Wednesday she sent over her handyman, who checked that the filter was installed correctly.  At one point Randy suggested he might stand back a bit from the furnace, but before he could move, it kicked on with the huge bang and he jumped back.  "That's not a filter issue," he said, "that's a liability issue, and I don't do liability."  He reported to the landlord who then sent a furnace guy on Thursday.  He determined what the problem was and told us to leave the furnace unplugged; he returned last night with the new valve, but it was not the correct size for this 38-year-old furnace.  Now we are on hold till at least Monday. 

Fortunately the outside temperature warms up to the upper 50's or even low 60's these days, but when I come downstairs in the morning it's often in the low 40's outside.  Getting out from a warm bed into chilly air is not fun.  This morning I was reminded of Lynne Cox, a female endurance swimmer who swam 2.7 miles across the Bering Strait in 1987; the water temperature was 43 degrees F.  In 2003 she swam a mile in the waters off Antarctica with the water at 28º.  I read her autobiography, in which she discussed how she acclimated her body to the cold by taking cold showers, sleeping without blankets, and so on.  I guess adapting to an inside temperature of 52º for a few days is not so bad.  We have lovely quilts, long underwear, woolen shirts, caps and gloves to help.