Late in the day yesterday, I found a technique that works for getting the remaining "critters" out of the soil. The bad thing is that it is enormously tedious - it takes 2+ hours to go through a sample.

But, I can deal with "enormously tedious" if I am confident it works. What I can't deal with is "slightly less tedious and I feel like I don't know what I'm doing and I feel like I may be missing stuff."

The other potentially good thing about the technique is that because of its nature, I am limited in how many samples I can do a day - because I am staring down a dissecting scope at soil which I have to illuminate rather brightly, I cannot do more than 2 samples in a day without destroying my eyes. So when I complete my 2 samples, I can be done, and not feel guilty about it - even if it is "only" noon on a Saturday.

(And at any rate - it will be just over a week and a half to finish these IF I can get 2 in a day, Sundays excepted).

****

I decided yesterday evening that I needed some time to relax. So I wound up watching (most of) a movie about Emile Zola on TCM (It's their "Oscar Month," which means they show all kinds of wonderful obscure old movies that won Oscars back in their day, but which are rarely seen now). The movie concerned the events of what I learned in French class as L'affaire Dreyfus - an innocent man was sent to Devil's Island for allegedly having been a spy, when a minor nobleman was the actual guilty party. (It was not mentioned in the movie - I suppose it would have been anachronistic to - but a point my French teacher brought up was that Dreyfus was a convenient scapegoat because Dreyfus was Jewish, and there was a tremendous amount of anti-Semitic sentiment in late 19th century France).

I mainly knew the outline of the case, plus the idea of "J'accuse" - Zola's impassioned argument that Dreyfus was innocent and he had been railroaded.

I was not aware of how the people of Paris turned against Zola for that, for the violence and nastiness of the response. That was brought out in the movie.

And also, the sad fact that Zola died shortly after Dreyfus' pardon, and (according to the movie) did not even get to shake the man's hand after he returned to French soil. (And Zola died of CO poisoning - or at least, again, according to the movie).

I have to say Paul Muni (the main actor) made an excellent Zola, in my estimation.

(Seeing the movie kind of makes me want to read something by Zola. I think I've read a few of his short stories - en Français, even, but never one of the novels).

I also worked some more on the (seemingly forever) Cobblestone Pullover. Finally, a milestone: I got up to where you put stitches on holders for the area under the arms, and started the very first sleeve.

***

And then, this morning.

I woke up a bit before the alarm (that is typical of me). Got up, thought, "Gee, it feels cold in here." On my way to the bathroom to dress for my workout, I turned up the thermostat.

Nothing.

So I went to the furnace and peered through the little window. It was flashing the "lockout 14" code, which means that at some point in the night, the furnace tried to ignite and failed. (I do not know why; sometimes I think an odd gust of wind down the flue will mess things up). So, I sighed, and went to pull the front panel off, so I could try hitting the reset switch.

I pulled on it.

It would not come off.

I looked, and saw that the last time I had the furnace checked, the guys found one lone metal screw and screwed the panel down. And the screw was one of those hex-head ones, where few homeowners (or at least few female homeowners who don't do a lot of home repair) have the right tool to remove.

The emotion I felt at that moment was perhaps best summed up by the old Schiller quotation: "Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain."

I went to my tool drawer, hunted around (remember: this is all happening about 4:45 this morning). Found a locking pliers, which I used to remove the offending screw. Hit the reset switch, the fan turned on (which is just what it's supposed to do in this situation), and when I released the switch, the furnace came on, just as it was supposed to.

For the rest of the time I was home (until about 7:10 when I left the house) the furnace was doing what it was supposed to do.

I changed the filter just in case, though the filter that was in had only been in for a few days past a month, and these are supposedly three-month filters (because that is the ONLY KIND I can find in the odd size my furnace requires. And yes, they are more expensive.)

I'm going to try not to worry about it today. If the furnace messes up again tonight, I'll call the furnace people first thing tomorrow and (sigh) give up the time I WAS going to spend on research tomorrow afternoon waiting on furnace guys. (I COULD go back and do the research afterwards, though the thought of being in a lab doing research at 5 pm on a Friday galls me).

I'm hoping it was some kind of odd glitch like happens once in a while - a gust of wind blowing just wrong down the flue; a bobble in the power supply right at the moment when the furnace is supposed to ignite.

I suppose the guys bolted the cover on as a safety precaution, but I tend to feel that if a furnace has an accessible-to-the-homeowner reset switch, it should continue to be accessible. Because I don't want to pay $50 for some furnace guy to come out and punch a button that I could punch myself for free. I suppose some people are JUST stupid enough to do things like test to see if the electrical contacts are "live" by licking them or something. But seriously, I am NOT that stupid; I should be able to open up my furnace and punch a silly reset switch when the furnace is being an idiot.

***

So, to sum up:

Fixed the furnace at 4:45 am
Did my hour's workout
Did a half-hour's piano practice.

I used to boast that I accomplished more before 8 am than many people did all day. I suspect that today that is true.