Mars in Retrograde

I heard somewhere recently that Mars is in retrograde. Or maybe it was Mercury. Anyhow, it was one of the planets. Obviously, I’m not much in tune with astronomy. The point to what I heard was that small and large appliances are prone to breaking down during this time.

Over the last month, two radio/CD players of mine have both gone kerphlooey. And, of course, there was the little problem with my wireless Internet equipment. Things happen in threes and that makes three, right?

Last night, I lay in bed thinking I was having the mother of all hot flashes, when it occurred to me that the furnace was running. And had been running for what seemed like a long time. I got up to check the thermostat and discovered that it was 85 degrees in the house. Outside, it was something like ten. I turned the furnace off. It kept running.

We have a very small house. We don’t have stairs to the basement. To get there, we must go outside. Most times I don’t mind. Most times. I bundled up in cover-alls and ran to the basement and hit the breaker switch to shut the thing down.

Options were few. If I let it run, I could end up with ashes where my house used to be. If I left it shut off, I’d be cold and miserable not to mention with temperatures dipping into single digits what would happen to the water pipes. We called the repair guy.

Turns out, he’s in the hospital. I felt bad for him, but it seemed darned inconvenient at the moment. I hit the Yellow Pages.

Thankfully, we found someone who agreed to come out to the country from the city at 1AM. Of course, we would have to pay an emergency service rate. Plus a higher hourly rate since we weren’t regular clients. I didn’t care. Neither ashes nor icicles appealed to me right then.

Hubby threatened to pull the camper up from its winter parking spot behind the barn and we could sleep there for the night.

I gave him “the look.” I’m sure you’ve all seen “the look” from your significant other at one point or another. It’s a wordless method of communicating “shut up and tell the man to get here ASAP”

Turns out the emergency repair guy was quite nice. He and hubby chatted away like schoolgirls. I couldn’t help but think, “talk to your new friend when we aren’t paying him 75 bucks an hour.” But I kept quiet. Also turns out that the thermostat had fallen prey to Mars being in retrograde. We now have a new thermostat and heat. And the furnace shuts off when it’s supposed to.

If what I heard was correct, this planetary thing will be over by the middle of the month. Gosh, I hope so. Mars is getting really expensive.

Comments

Joyce Tremel said…
That's one reason why I LOVE our woodstove. If the furnace conks out, we still have heat.

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