Seems like lots of things around here are in need of repair right now. The heater went out and the roof got a terminal diagnosis from the roof guy. The dentist told us the kid has a couple of cavities which makes me feel like I need to clear some space on my dresser for the "Worst Parent of the Year" award, and I took the cat in to the vet where my standard line of "Oh no, it's just that he's really really fluffy" was carrying absolutely no credence with the weight scale. On Sunday I got hit in the chest with a hockey puck and then tweaked my ankle at practice. (That last one occurred in a spectacular splat that was full of grace and agility; really, you're sorry you missed it.)
So the cat's on diet, I'm resting my foot, and the kid's on a dental hygiene regiment that the Tooth Fairy herself would probably consider militantly harsh.
But let's talk about the heater, because it was the easiest thing to fix. I just had to call the right guy.
It has started doing this thing where it would click on, then off, then on again, and off over and over. It was really fun and relaxing to listen too. Like having an adolescent squirrel living in the attic that thought that it'd be, like, totally cool to learn how to play the drums, man. Scratch the relaxing part. During the day I'd listen to it and think, hey this probably isn't doing our energy bill any favors. And in the middle of the night I'd listen to it and think, hey, I wonder it's it's going to burn the house down.
So I called the guy. The wrong guy. The company I called gave me a window of arrival of 12:30 to 5pm. So I took an afternoon off work and waited around. They finally called at 4:30 to inform me that they were actually unavailable that day and would I like to take another day off work tomorrow to wait around and see if they felt like showing up? I thanked them for the kind offer but declined. I won't out the offending company online. I'd rather not use my blog as a pyre to burn companies who piss me off the once; I wouldn't want to steal Yelp's thunder.
But after I was done being pissed at the first experience and way done with walking around the house in two sweatshirts and a hat chattering through my teeth about how it's really not that cold and who needs a heater anyway, I finally hit the internet and found a new guy, and he is worth telling you about. After examining the heating repair guys based in my town, I picked the most qualified company (read that as the one with the cleanest, most useful website) which turned out to be Woodland Heating and Air Conditioning. They gave me a window of 8:30 to 10 am the next morning (good) and not only showed up (better) but showed up at 8:30 on the nose (awesome). The guy was knowledgable, friendly, didn't try to sell me a new system, and then--check this out--said he wouldn't bill me for a few days just to be sure that his repair efforts were totally effective first. Plus, he was wearing a Pliny the Elder t-shirt, which speaks of good taste. His repairs were completely effective. So I can whole-hearted recommend Woodland Heating and Air Conditioning to anyone out there whose real-world location happens to be geographically similar to mine.
And that's one big thing off my list. So now I can turn to the next problem, like the 18 pound cat bouncing around my bound-up ankle trying to convince me that he's wasting away to practically nothing on his new low calorie cat kibble.