Dead furnace

Our gas-powered furnace down in the basement has been laboring for several months, and we even called the landlord air-conditioning repair person about it a couple of weeks ago. (He promised to come check it out but did not.) For a week we've been feeling bad about all of the folks who lost electric power (and their heat) - when we did not this time - but we finally lost our heat when the furnace kept straining to go on last night but couldn't - and the temperature started dropping. it was one of the coldest nights of the year last night. Vincent has his own furnace in his room upstairs, and we left the oven on in the kitchen after heating. Stephanie got us one space heater for the Florida room last year, and we moved this in to the living room but the temperature continued to sink (see above). But as we went to bed we put the space heater into our bedroom, which is small enough that our room got hot and Frisco even went in the computer room to sleep. (He abandons us and sleeps there some times - but when it was 59 degrees?!) I had been petrified that I would have to get up chilled and go out and walk the dog in the cold - but as it was I was quite toasty when I left the bedroom (again - it was 59 in the house - though still warmer than the 40 degrees in my colleagues' houses without power for a week. One of my colleagues had been without power for a week until hers came back, and Libby at our dentist's office still did not have her power Tuesday (since late Monday night a week before). Stephanie and Vincent skipped taking showers, but I took one (we moved the space heater to the bathroom). I had called back the repair person Monday night. He called at 8:30 a.m. at work and said the heater was working for him and he was going to set it to keep working so that he could go fix the heaters at some other houses where they were really not working. I argued with him a little - I wasn't completely sure he had really gotten ours working and I'm not sure he was sure it had ever really quit working for us. Apparently me pushing worked, as a couple of hours later colleagues of his called back to say they had started replacing the furnace motor. They were working when I stopped by in late morning to walk the dog and as I left they left too - the furnace apparently fixed. It's not as hot in our bedroom tonight as it was last night, but the house as a whole is much warmer. With the cold air in the morning, I had moved the turtles up to the 2nd floor (where Vincent's heater continued to work) as well as - at the last moment - Frisco's crate - moved from the basement to Vincent's bathroom (where it was at Fisherman's Landing where - however - Vincent didn't use that bathroom), where it was warm and where Frisco gets natural light (but Frisco gets urine on the linoleum). As the temperature sank - before we thought of moving the crate - I had decided to take Frisco to a kennel. When I was getting ready to leave this morning, Frisco actually ran up the stairs to the 2nd floor - had he forgotten the crate - which he usually tried to avoid - was there, or was he more Ok with staying in it in a warm room with natural light (instead of in the basement)? We'll have to consider that (esp. if Vincent takes off eventually). So all of us briefly got a taste of life without heat, something we'd rather not repeat.

-- Perry