Sunday, October 17, 2004
The Cold War
Yesterday I spent half the day wearing two pairs of pants, and not just for the fashion. You see, just in time for Chicago's first day of truly miserable cold, our heating system decided to not work. And because waiting for the pidgin-speaking repairman to arrive required several hours of sitting in To-Build-a-Fire-level temperatures, my roommate and I spent those hours arraying ourselves in numerous layers of our finest winter clothes, inventing games we could play to stay warm (I'm amazed that "Capture the Remote Control" hasn't yet caught on in more temperate zones, frankly), and eating "warm foods." I made grilled cheese sandwiches while wearing winter gloves. It was awesome.
But finally our salvation presented itself, in monosyllabic form. After pointing perplexedly at our heater for about fifteen minutes and uttering surprised-sounding expressions that I swear could not have been English, our repair guy made a quick trip to Home Depot and put everything back in order. He explained the problem, but given that the explanation contained the word "therm" about fifteen times, I'm pretty sure it was made up, and totally sure I completely zoned out for the duration. I got back to one-pant status, though, which is probably how God intended it, and that's all that I ask.
There's got to be a valuable lesson to learn somewhere in all of this, but I'll be damned if I know what it is. Keep plenty of sweaters on hand? Eat more grilled cheese? Therm? This is why I'll never be a children's television show host. This and all those felonies.
Yesterday I spent half the day wearing two pairs of pants, and not just for the fashion. You see, just in time for Chicago's first day of truly miserable cold, our heating system decided to not work. And because waiting for the pidgin-speaking repairman to arrive required several hours of sitting in To-Build-a-Fire-level temperatures, my roommate and I spent those hours arraying ourselves in numerous layers of our finest winter clothes, inventing games we could play to stay warm (I'm amazed that "Capture the Remote Control" hasn't yet caught on in more temperate zones, frankly), and eating "warm foods." I made grilled cheese sandwiches while wearing winter gloves. It was awesome.
But finally our salvation presented itself, in monosyllabic form. After pointing perplexedly at our heater for about fifteen minutes and uttering surprised-sounding expressions that I swear could not have been English, our repair guy made a quick trip to Home Depot and put everything back in order. He explained the problem, but given that the explanation contained the word "therm" about fifteen times, I'm pretty sure it was made up, and totally sure I completely zoned out for the duration. I got back to one-pant status, though, which is probably how God intended it, and that's all that I ask.
There's got to be a valuable lesson to learn somewhere in all of this, but I'll be damned if I know what it is. Keep plenty of sweaters on hand? Eat more grilled cheese? Therm? This is why I'll never be a children's television show host. This and all those felonies.
