Okay, most of you know that we were forced to move in the middle of
one of the worst cold snaps, with some of the worst snow of my
lifetime. You may also recall that our car's engine blew up about a
week and a half ago.

Those were easy.

Yesterday, we had to call the ambulance to pick Crash up because his
hip was about to dislocate and we were trying to prevent another
painful occurance. The hip was in place until they started to take x-
rays, then POP! Since Left Hip version 2.0 was installed in
Rochester, he was shipped there to get it popped back into place.
Usually fairly routine. But in this case, his heart stopped twice
while he was under anesthesia. They got it going with CPR, but it was
not what we'd call a Good Thing.

Then, he was stranded, 50 miles from home, late at night. After 3
hours, he finally got in contact with the hospital's social worker,
who got him a taxi voucher for the trip. $119 cab fare! But since
the car blew up ....

Still ... easy.

Tonight, I smelled something in the kitchen that got worse when I
sniffed at the top of the basement stairs. Didn't smell quite like
gas, but close enough that I called the gas company. The gas guy took
his little geiger counter out and it started squealing like a stuck
pig. He said we had a carbon dioxide count of 197. I don't know what
that means, but he said, "Get your animals and get OUT of the
building!" Then he started pounding on the door of the people in the
other half of the duplex, and evaculated them, too. We had the
utility truck, two squad cars, and a fire truck in front of our house
for a couple hours.

The Red Cross had us set up to stay at a hotel for the night (which
would be okay if we had a CAR to get there and back), but then the
heating and plumbing guy came and said it was safe to be here, because
the gas was turned off. He just wanted to set up a bunch of space
heaters and get all of our faucets on perma-trickle so the pipe won't
freeze (we have radiator heat - and it's 3F outside). We plugged two
heaters in on the main floor and promptly blew a fuse. No fuses
here. No car. Heating guy tells us that there is a decomposing cat
in the basement. Ick! We're still moving in, and the basement light
doesn't work. We had no idea. Ick! Heating guy said to go ahead and
heat the kitchen with the electric oven, door open. So that's our
only main floor heat.

There are exactly two of those newfangled electrical outlets that can
be reset in this whole house. One's in the kitchen (Crash is using an
extension cord in that one to power his computer that was attached to
one of the dead outlets in the living room) and the other is in the
bathroom. So we have a space heater in the bathroom. But we're
nervous about plugging any into the bedroom outlets, so we're just
gonna sleep in sweats.

We find out tomorrow if the boiler needs to be replaced or if it can
be repaired. Then we find out how long a replacement will take to
arrive if a new one is required.

The cockatiels are visiting next door. We hope that the neighbors'
two Rottweilers will leave them alone until it's safe for them to
return home.

I think that's about it for now. I may have missed something.
Probably have. It's been an interesting year so far. Update tomorrow
after we find out how long we'll be living in an igloo.

ObFood: We had pizza delivered. I didn't feel like cooking.

Carol