Thank goodness it's...

Oh man. This has been a week. (and last week was kind of A Week, too, especially with those meetings).

I have decided this will be a weekend of (partial) slackdom. Partial, because my former graduate advisor sent me a "final draft" of a paper he wrote (that was fast. I guess you can get more done faster in retirement if you are motivated to) and wanted me to look at it before he sends it off. Seeing as I'm on as an author (some of the initial research involved in this was something I did as an RA) and yet had no data-analysis or real writing responsibilities, I feel it behooves me to give it a good reading and make any suggestions I can think of.

(Heh. Behooves. I like that word, makes me think of MLP.)

I do get to go home "early" today (after my office hours end at 1). My furnace is acting up a little. It would do the annoying "Oh, I'm lit!.......no, wait, I'm not!" thing, and if it does that four times in a row, it "locks out" (a safety measure) for three hours, and over the past few days, the house can get kind of cold in three hours, especially considering that I usually keep the thermostat around 68. The thing is, about half the time, when it would come back on after the lockout, it was fine. Well, until it got up close to the set temperature, then it started doing the "I'm lit.....NOPE!" thing again.

Especially coupled with the fact that my office is hovering around 60 (and the lab room where I taught yesterday was equally cold), that made me not-happy. (When I arrived home yesterday, my digital thermometer said 62 or 63.)

Sleeping is fine. I dug out a pair of ski underwear (I don't ski, but I keep them on hand for emergencies like this) and wore those, and put an extra quilt on the bed, and I was fine even when it got down pretty cold (like to 59) in the house overnight.

I tolerate cold well when I'm outside and moving around and dressed for it. Not so well when I'm sitting at my desk trying to grade.(and when there's cool air coming down out of the vent on the back of my neck. I guess my building's heater is broken again.)

I'm hoping the furnace thing is a simple fix. A few years back when it did something similar, there was an oxidation buildup on the flame sensor and the furnace guys were able to take care of it with a little emery paper. (The furnace is more than 12 years old. It was there when I bought the house. I have no idea how long furnaces last but I seem to remember my parents' one lasting more than 20 years. So I'm really hoping this doesn't result in the "it's time for a new furnace" talk.)

As much as I've said "I will never go back to living in an apartment if I can at all afford to avoid it," I have to admit the home-maintenance things sometimes get me down. I've kind of obsessed off and on for a day about "what if I need a new furnace?" - not so much the cost but the logistics. (The current furnace is in a repurposed closet and I suspect that would not meet code today)