Sunday, January 10, 2010

The Heat is On

Whew. Brief worry about a gas leak here tonight.

I smelled intermittent gas faintly starting at about 6:30. I opened a window and checked around, but found nothing. Nothing in the furnace room was off. But I kept smelling something ... The kids did, too, when I mentioned it.

Finally, I noticed that the smell came from the heat vents. Whoa. So off went the furnace at about 7:00. No smells at all. I took the kids back to their mom's, and returned home to call DTE to report a gas leak. I smelled nothing when I came in, and turned on every planet-killing bulb in my home to generate some heat.

The operator got my information and then gave me safety information, including don't turn on or off anything electrical or use cell or cordless phones.

OK, so don't turn off any lights already on? And I'll surely not use a cordless after I hang up this cordless phone. Oops.

But I didn't smell gas, so I guess it was all right.

It took about an hour for a guy from the gas company to arrive, but he was pretty cool and tracked down a leak in a connection in the gas line near the furnace. It was likely that the leaking gas was being sucked into the intake and then blown through the vents.

So now my furnace is on, I have heat, and I don't smell any gas.

And I get to go to work tomorrow morning. Which is daunting, since I had Thursday and Friday off to take care of Mister who had a cold (and Lamb on Friday, who got the day off from mom by parlaying an admittedly sore finger (from gym) into a day off--I suspect vacation envy, honestly). The work pile breeds in my absence.

Oh, and did I mention I can clearly feel the cold I caught from Mister coming on? I guess I didn't.

Monday is going to bite.