Well, dare I hope?

The Nice Young Men (because really, they are) from the Furnace Place came, they scraped a bunch of oxide off of the flame sensor (after hearing my description of the problems, nodding sagely, and saying, 'yes, ma'am, sometimes an oxide buildup can cause just that problem.'). The furnace is running now and heating and lighting up okay and not doing the "I'm ignited!....No, I'm not!" game*

(*And yes, I am rapidly descending into the madness of imagining my furnace as, if not exactly a malign presence, certainly a mischevious one. Perhaps its failure to operate properly could even be seen as a ploy for attention. Trouble IS a form of attention, as they say.

But it bothers me that I can so easily come to give human attributes to an inanimate object - and an inanimate object WITHOUT A FACE even, at that.

If I start hiring cooks named Fritz, and growing orchids on my roof, and refusing to leave the house on business, someone please send help. Preferably before I hit 1/7 of a ton...)

They did say that if this didn't work, they could order a new flame sensor for me. I really hope it DOES work, I don't want to wind up going the Delian Ships route with my furnace, where it's gradually replaced part by part....I'd be better off just biting the bullet, buying a new one, and moving into a hotel for the weeks where I'm waiting for it to be installed.

And the cake is baked and frankly it looks like one of the better cakes I have made in recent memory. (I used my mother's recipe for a Hot Milk Sponge, better known as a Lazy Daisy cake. One of its virtues being that you need not wait until it cools to put the topping on - it is topped with a brown-sugar and pecan topping that can be broiled on (except I do not as I fear the broiler scorching the brown sugar))

So maybe things are turning around. Yesterday I had managed to repair one of the departmental photocopiers that had been broken for weeks (thanks to a CERTAIN PERSON trying to run too much paper through it at once...and then that same CERTAIN PERSON not fessing up to the fact that they jammed it) so I think that counts for a few cosmic brownie points somewhere....

In knitting news: I've started the sleeves of the Central Park Hoodie; I'm knitting both of them at once as they are identical in structure. That way, I avoid the doldrums of what some bloggers call "sleeve island."

I'm also contemplating new ideas for new projects. I have to say I like the Keyboard Biologist's plan for knitting up knee socks. No, I'd not do toe-up - unless I could modify them with a flaptype heel, because those hourglass heels do not fit my feet.

But I kind of like the idea of knitting up knee socks, of taking the necessary measurements and doing the decreases and increases where needed...I have fairly, um, "athletic" (to be nice about it) calves, and so most of the Sweet Young Thing type patterns for knee socks - well, I'd probably not get them much past my ankles. But I like the idea of "custom" knee socks, with decreases in the right places.

Then again - where would I wear them? The last time I wore knee socks I think I was 15. I don't know if I can still pull off the "Get me! I'm a funky fresh Earth-mama wearing wool knee socks with a skirt!" vibe.

That said? I think pantyhose are one of the worst rip-offs of adulthood. They're cold when it's cold out, hot when it's hot out, they tend to self-destruct (especially if you tend to bump up against open file cabinet drawers or run into sandburs while trotting around campus), they're a pain to launder, they're arguably unhygenic....

So I don't know. I'm also wanting to start yet another sweater even though Central Park is still not done...I have some Knit Picks "Shine" in a purply color ("Crocus" they call it) that I bought last summer for a SitCom Chic...and I have that nice green stuff in my stash for the zig-zag vest out of Interweave Knits. And I found the rest of my pink Peruvian Wool that I bought without any project in mind...