January  7,  2004

        So Himself was a tad grumpy last night - and deservedly so.  

      The day seemed to be a relatively calm one, until all h*ll broke loose in the evening - and most of the problems came side by side with the cold front that has gripped us.

       i came home at about 6:30 and the house seemed a bit cold, but not really bad.  i grabbed a bit of cheese and headed upstairs to check email and whatnot.  About an hour later i decided to come downstairs and start prepping dinner (no instructions left as He sometimes does on Tuesday *sigh*.)  So i was just going to wing it, based on the piece of meat i saw thawing. 

      However, when i got back downstairs, i noticed that there was a LOT of cold air whooshing about.  Our basement door has blown open before, so i figured that was probably it.  i headed in that direction and found one of the cats teetering on the very bottom step and not willing to go any further ... because she couldn't - there was WATER almost up to the top of the step!  Huh?

      i decided to go wading through it, to discover that not only was the basement door wide open, but the humidifier on the furnace was malfunctioning - the drainage hose that led to outside couldn't drain, because the opening outside had frozen shut.  Hence the water had to go somewhere.  What a mess.  The poor cats needed a canoe to get to their litter pan.  Well not that they had considered attempting the trek up to that point - but after watching me walk through it all, Molly decided to give it a go.  Too funny!  One little step, shake paw ... two little steps, shake-a, shake-a.  You get the idea.

      i couldn't reach Himself on the cell, so had to share the bad news as He came in the door - because unfortunately He had to go back out in the EXTREME COLD to get the wet vac from my son.  He had His own bad news though.  Apparently He rolled down the window in the old car while driving home, and it wouldn't go back up!  Yay power windows.  

      After much wrestling with plastic and tape, He went off to get the vacuum and my son.  Hours later, the basement lake water-level was much reduced, and my son had turned himself into a human popsicle while trying to still fix the car window.  (Today we found out that the motor that operates the window is toast and there's nothing that will fix it.)  

      So all in all, the originally planned dinner turned into a hot bowl of soup at around 10:30 p.m.  And Himself crawled into bed not long afterwards ... a semi-defeated soldier against the "army" called winter.  Ick.

PS - check out the hot pic on the sidebar today!  i don't know where he finds all these!