Just Chillin' at home, literally

It seems I remembered snow days as a fun thing.  What I apparently took for granted is part of what makes them fun is that you can go inside and warm up.  Such was not the case last night and this morning.  Apparently the elaborate apparatus we constructed for the furnace vent during the last snowstorm still did not stop the wind enough to keep the furnace running.  Shortly after I posted on here last night, the furnace kicked off and the temperature in the house began to fall.  I tried everything I could think of or find on the internet, and despite my efforts, it would only run for a few minutes and then shut itself down. Finally, about midnight I gave up and moved the boys to our bedroom where we could keep warm under the covers.  L did not appreciate this, so around 1 AM we moved him back to his room, which thankfully was remaining somewhat warm.

The little space heater kept the bedroom warm throughout the night.  Downstairs, however, the temperature had dropped to 55 degrees by morning.  I think we are lucky if we use our fireplace more than a couple times a year, but we were loving it this morning.  It brought the downstairs back up to a comfortable temperature fairly quickly.  I repeated my efforts to revive the furnace, with similar results.  I called the HVAC company, but of course they were snowed in too.  We resigned ourselves to keeping warm from the fireplace, and waiting for the streets to get cleared or the wind to die down, whichever came first.

I tried to do my part to make way for the furnace repair man, and set out to clear the driveway.  It was mostly clear, except for a 3' drift right in front of the garage doors.  A bigger drift, probably about 4' high was outside our front door.  I counted shoveling that one as my workout for the day.  After shoveling snow, I did a quick survey of the area.  The street was drifted a foot to two feet deep from our driveway to the stop sign, and who knows how far after that.  It was obvious we weren't going anywhere any time soon.  Despite howling all night, the wind did not appear to cause any damage other than the grill cover.  I was sure I was going to find the windmill scattered across the back yard.  While it definitely took a beating, I think I can bend it back in shape.

Things finally took a turn for the better around noon.  Although the repair man called to say he couldn't make it to us, the furnace started working again as the winds died down, and (knock on wood) has been working fine since then.  Also as the winds died down, the neighbors began to emerge and start their snow removal tasks.  One of N's friends was out, so we went outside to play a little bit, and share our stories of surviving the storm.  It wasn't until 8 that a backhoe finally made it to our street to clear the snow.  He left me a pretty good pile at the end of the drive, so I suited up one more time to clean it up.  I figured even at 8 it was warmer than it is supposed to be any time tomorrow, and that's one less thing to worry about in the morning.  After the last 24 hours, it's nice to just sit at the computer, relax and be warm.  It wasn't easy, but someday we can tell stories about how we survived the "Blizzard of 2011".