High Holy Mass of Contradictions

When we had the incredibly outrageous heating bills this winter, we had several experts come out to look at our setup: a guy from the gas company, who verified that there were no leaks and we were not, in fact, providing gas for the entire neighborhood and said the house has the cheapest, least efficient furnace on the market; two energy auditors, who gave us a full report of how to better insulate the house and some ideas for the future renovations about what we can improve, including replacing our cheap, inefficient furnace; and a furnace sales team from Sears to show us what kind of replacement options we had for our cheap, inefficient furnace.

We ended up signing to buy a new furnace from Sears -- almost their top-of-the-line model, as far as energy efficiency is concerned anyway -- and were eagerly awaiting its installation.

A few weeks later, the installation guy came out and determined that there is no way in hell we're getting the new furnace into the attic through the itty-bitty teeny-weeny access door. Even if we cut through more of the drywall on the ceiling, the joists were set too close to one another for the new furnace to get through. In fact, he pondered aloud, how the hell did they get the existing one up there?

It's a mystery, but anyway, he left saying nothing could be done until we hired a carpenter to install a bonafide attic access door. Which meant cutting through the 170-year-plus-old joists, which are effectively petrified. Not an easy task. And not one to be taken lightly, as there's no replacing the heft and sturdiness of these timbers.

So after talking about it a bit, we decided to hire one of the architects in the neighborhood to draw up some plans for the future renovation so that, if we had to have a new attic access installed, at least it would be in a logical, permanent place.

The linked image is of the first draft of the architect's plans. The attic issue isn't really solved in these, which is one of the comments we gave him when we met again last week. We had a great creative session poking holes into this design, and came up with some amazing results. I'll definitely share those drawings when we get them, but for now, here's what we have.

How wrong is that?

But at least I'm warm. I'm sitting on the front steps and I can just barely pick up the wireless signal from the back of the house. Cool.

And Karsten is walking Barbra on a leash. Double cool.

Dropped off five CDs at the post office this morning to be mailed all over the place for various projects. I've noticed that many of these songs we're pitching are for projects that are scheduled to be recorded in the February-March timeframe, so we may be hearing nothing for weeks and then, possibly, several things at once. Here's hoping.

Was sitting at my desk in my winter coat, warming my feet by the space heater, trying to concentrate on doing something productive when oiran called to say she was going out for coffee. Yay! We met at Fido and had a nice, long discussion about writing, religion, and what handfuls we both are for our respective partners, and then whisked off to Target for girly clearance-browsing. Whee!

Then I had to dash back home to pick up Karsten so we could go meet binghead and S for pizza at Mafiaoza's. That was a blast, especially when she and S debated whether 3 12" or 2 18" pizzas would actually yield more pie -- and actually went through the geometrical calculations to determine that, yes, the 2 18" pizzas offer substantially more edible area. Wow. Was I ever relieved to know that!

We had a great time telling scary cold weather stories, scary car stories, and scary dog attack stories until they realized they had to go home and feed their own dogs or risk canine cannibalism.

And now I'm tucked into bed with a heated pillow at my neck and my hot laptop on my, well, laptop, basking in the snug warmth of two comforters and a nearby space heater. I may even get some songwriting done this evening. Hurray for heat!

The energy audit people were clearly overwhelmed in a "where do we begin" type of way. Yikes. But they came back with useful info and will be providing a full written report in a week or so.

Meanwhile, we've been sitting around wrapped in comforters and/or coats. We escaped to the Frist Center to see the Murano glass exhibit (it was gorgeous!) for a while this afternoon, but we've come back and have broken down -- we're running the furnace for an hour or so. We're such wimps.

House is still cold. Gas guy just came and said yep, this is how it is.

Energy audit people come tomorrow. We're getting our smelling salts ready. For them.

The songwriting corner of my brain is a bit too chilled to function properly, but I've been working our MySpace profile like crazy.

Last night we enjoyed warm environs and tasty pizza chez nothinganything and sonatamoonlite. Thanks, you two!

Tonight, it's the MuzikMafia at the Mercy Lounge. As Shannon Lawson says, "Haow haow!" :-)

Back to writing.

I swear I don't know whether to laugh or cry. After nearly having a heart attack when I received a SIX HUNDRED DOLLAR gas bill last month, I was fearing the worst when I opened this past month's gas bill. But we'd had the furnace inspected and the guy said the venting hose had been loose, so our heat was making our attic nice and toasty. So I figured this month's was going to be high, but maybe a little less than $600. But it was OMG NINE HUNDRED DOLLARS!?!

I know our house is poorly insulated and all that, but this is freakin' ridiculous. We just can't afford this. I'm going to end up sitting around with the heat off, wrapped up in blankets. Off it goes.