As the Sun sank into the West, our Eastern horizon turned pale orange. It was not cloud but presumably a reflection or a diffusion of light through the very cold atmosphere.
Something I had never seen before.
There are no end of surprises if you look for them.
Ice on the kitchen window this morning .
Grant harrumphed about the windows not being sealed properly. He’s in charge of climate control.
He may have a challenge on his hands…
The National Weather Bureau issued warnings yesterday about high winds and dangerous chill factors and it certainly did get breezy last night.
A flickering of the lights prompted me to check the level of our natural gas supply. We have had “issues” getting deliveries in the past, so to rectify things I had called the company recently to discuss the matter.
A nice lady in some remote Midwest state told me that my account was set-up as a “will call” and not automatic refill which is what I had believed.
So she made adjustments and said that in future, when my tanks dropped below 32%, an automatic delivery would occur. Splendid.
Back in November, before this,we had been topped up and about ten days later I was surprised to see the delivery truck pulling in again. In a normal world, I would have gone out to talk to the driver but previous experience discouraged the notion as I didn’t care to be groused at.
As far as I was concerned, the truck came of it’s own volition and if it was a fool’s errand, so sorry.
Except that the bill increased suddenly by some $400.
At that point I was still on the will-call as needed program, so I debated whether I should challenge this development and decided it was something I wouldn’t win, so why get my guts in a knot arguing. We would need the gas anyway and I didn’t see how it could all be a fiddle.
Just another of our little mysteries.
Having subsequently sorted out that I wished to be on the “Keep ’em Full” program, I stopped fretting over the tank levels.
Mistake!
Listening to the wind chimes bashing about last night and noticing the flickering light, I thought: “I haven’t seen the gas company truck lately…let me just check…”
22%.
Shit. What happened to the 32% “trigger”?
And it was Friday night.
All I could do was promptly send an order online.
Response:”Your order has been received!”
This morning the Master of Climate Control was fretting. The problem being that snow is expected, which can make delivery of gas awkward.
Particularly as we appear to not have a “snow man”.
Our ex-snow man, who is our grass man, came by in October with another chap in his truck. He and Grant and the other bloke did arm waving and vague muttering but no names or numbers were exchanged.
At the time I did suggest that this was a rather casual way of contracting a new snow man and when we got some 6 inches of snow weeks later, no-one turned up.
So I suspect on Monday we may be in a jam.
Or a snow drift.
Because in the meantime I phoned the gas company and was told no, I was not on the auto-refill program and furthermore they had no online order. Additionally, the auto-refill trigger is 22%. And they don’t deliver on weekends.
“However,” the lady said “because you are such a good customer (!) and you are worried about the weather, I can connect you to someone else” (that you can tell your sorry tale to).
The “someone else” told me emphatically that 20% would get us through the weekend. For an emergency weekend delivery, I would have to say that my tanks were below 20%.
In other words, LIE.
Perhaps that’s what I should have done. I’m not really concerned about the ethics involved. But I am bloody-minded.
If we lose electricity and run out of gas, I shall be sitting here with 11 cold cats and a failed Climate Control Manager.
But hopefully it won’t come to that.
I guess I shouldn’t fuss about my computer problems i.e. uploading photos to my blog. The prospect of 11 chilly and/or chilled cats is much more serious.
fingers crossed!
Well, here’s hoping that you will make it through the weekend … only one more day (and two nights) to go!
I love your ice figures on the windows and how beautiful are your pictures of … hmm, is it sunrise?
The first two were last night. The others this morning.
Quick – teach the cats to run around on demand so they generate extra heat!
They are all curled up into little furry balls.
Hope you have some kind of emergency back-up heat source. Just in case.
Sounds like you will make it through this difficult week-end.
All the best.
We have a generator…but that is a whole other story!
Is that some kind of propane or liquid? I can’t understand why you would need natural gas to be refilled. Here it is piped in, and never runs out. Though we have oil heating in Beetley, so have to have regular deliveries and watch the tank levels.
Best wishes, Pete.
Actually it’s propane and has to be loaded into two tanks. My error!
Understood! 🙂