1. What's one good way to warm up on a frigid Sunday morning?
First of all, retire to the Vizio room where the heat pump unit heats the room beautifully.
Second of all, leap on the ZOOM machine and have great conversation with Bill and Diane.
It was fun talking about the current arctic blast and Bill and Diane both told great stories about their experiences back in 1990 when Seattle got whomped by a snow storm that paralyzed much of the city's mass transit system and both of them survived arduous, Odysseus-like journeys from work back home again.
We also talked about David Lodge's book, Small World. For Diane, the book brings back her experiences working as a staff member at the University of Washington and witnessing the behavior, not all of it flattering, of different professors.
We also talked about the extensive work that will be done on Bill and Diane's condo in the coming months. It will greatly improve their residence.
It was a warming conversation, indeed.
2. Debbie and I hosted family dinner tonight. Debbie spent part of the afternoon putting together a superb enchilada casserole, baked in a cast iron skillet, with a cornbread bottom and a cornbread top.
My job was to make the mix for tonight's cocktail: A Bloody Bull. It's a drink served hot. It resembles a Bloody Mary in that it tomato based with lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce, but it also includes beef bullion (or beef broth/stock). So I heated up the mixture of these ingredients. (Next time I'll puree the canned diced tomatoes.) I combined the mixture with vodka in coffee mugs and garnished the Bloody Bull with cucumber spears.
This cocktail really worked for me. I love hot drinks during cold snaps and I found the combination of beef boullion and tomatoes, brightened up with lemon juice and bolstered by the Worcestershire sauce not only tasty, but heartening.
Carol and Christy rounded out our dinner offerings. Carol brought a delicious cabbage salad and Christy contributed a bottle of blended white wine bottled in a winery near Julietta, ID.
3. Nearly two years ago, we had a heat pump system installed in our house. It works beautifully in every kind of weather with one exception. The unit in the living room simply cannot keep that room very warm during extreme cold snaps. We kept our gas furnace operational as a secondary source of heat and, until this weekend, we hadn't even thought of using it.
On Saturday, I tried to get the furnace started, but the thermostat wasn't working. The thermostat uses AAA batteries and we had just used our last ones. I took a couple of batteries out of another device and tried them in the thermostat. No luck.
I concluded that the thermostat had crapped out.
When Paul and Carol arrived for dinner, Paul looked at the thermostat and asked me if I'd changed the batteries. I told him what I'd done and then said, "Well, I bought new AAA batteries today. What do we have to lose? Let's try a couple of those."
They worked!
With five of us in the house and the oven having been on, we were all comfortable before, during, and after dinner with the heat provided by the heating unit in the living room.
Once the house cleared out, I went to the basement, turned on the furnace, and lo and behold, it worked.
We have a secondary heat source for the living room (the gas furnace provides little heat anywhere else -- one of the principle reasons we had the house wide heat pump system installed).
It's a relief being able to turn off the heat pump unit in the living room and to let the gas furnace do its job.
All we needed were brand new batteries.
The thermostat seemed to reject the hand me downs!
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