As far as Monday goes, this one really wasn't good. The day started with an early call from work. Literally one foot stepping out of the shower, towel in hand, and that set the tone for the day.
Experience should dictate that when the mercury hovers around -37 everything will be cold. But no, somehow this escaped me this morning. With bare hand I grab the metal snow brush and grimaced through the task dusting the morning snow. The truck barely started. After a grueling 10 minutes of praying, turning the key, pumping the gas and at last she rolled over, sputtered and went again. Whew! Still my fingers are not gloved and are properly frost nipped. Off to work. Firstly to deal with the reason for the call and discover what they need, we can deliver.
Now it's so cold that we decided to close the department door to preserve as much heat as possible and I stubbornly keep my sealskin kamik on, usually I change into work shoes, but that's too risky today.
After some thought I considered that perhaps the problem with the truck was the block heater. I called the mechanic and he gently suggested I check the power cord (replaced it-check) the breaker panel (flipped it-check), the outlet (tested in the fall-check). He was kind enough to squeeze the vehicle in at lunch for me.
Before departing Alan's voice in my foggy head reminds me to pour the gasline antifreeze into the tank. ONCE again, no mittens. The thing with gasline antifreeze is it doesn't freeze, it just gets very cold, in this case -37C. Just picking up the bottle hurts. Sure enough the nozzle doesn't reach far enough to penetrate the valve. Out come the handy car keys and I pour, drain, pour drain, sometimes simultaneously resulting in me pouring cold antifreeze over my cold fingers. BAH!
After what seemed like an hour, the bottle was emptied. My fingers were in excruciating pain but the truck was idling and the task was completed.
Lost mittens during lunch. Yeah I do own several pairs, I just carry them around in my pocket in case I need them...
Kind cab driver hunts me down behind locked departmental doors to return mittens.
Verdict- block heater okay.
Today I called the airline to book a prepaid ticket which I purchased on a seat sale. Up-charge, guesses? Sit down, here it comes $600! Flying out anyway, stinkers!
On preparing dinner; lift pan to put into preheated oven. Something falls off near the element. A small fire ignites a package of peanut butter on which I had inadvertently placed the pan. Peanut butter, plastic and that foily stuff is alight!
Oh brother, turn off the oven, get off the phone, extinguish small flames, scoop liquefying peanut butter onto tin foil and mop up the rest.
8pm dinner is finally in the oven.
On detailing my day to Alan, he suggested there is an unmarked switch in the storage room which sends power to the outlet for the vehicle. Ooops better go check ~~~it is set to "
off".
Hoping Tuesday starts off on a gentler and drier foot!
and sheepishly sought the help of the men attending. Not a great introduction. Fortunately with skillful rocking to and fro the visitor was able to un-stick the truck without the arduous task of digging.
