One of Those Days

Today started out like any other- I got out of bed and had coffee. Woopee. My plan was to finish assembling the drawer I’ve been working on. I was on the last set of half-blind pins. After that, I just had to get the drawer bottom glued up and the grooves for the bottom milled into the drawer sides.

It’s cold up here. The day started at 19 and the temp fell as the day wore on. To make the garage a little more comfortable, I went to get a propane tank filled up so I’d have some heat out there. After I got back, the Wife went grocery shopping and I started in on some other chores.

After taking up the garbage, I tended to the fire. A little ash spilled out onto the hearth so I waited a few minuted and then sucked it up with the vacuum. Afterwards I spent some time with the boy and his spirograph toy. While I was laying on the floor, I started picking up a scent like rotten eggs. Naturally, I figured the boy was having some … intestinal issues.

The smell intensified. I started trying to figure out it’s source. After a couple of minutes I realized it was coming from the basement. My first suspicion was the pellet stove.

Nope. It was the central vacuum canister. The ash I’d sucked up had started the dog fur smoldering and filled half the basement with smoke.

I was able to get the bag outside in short order, but the smell lingered. I opened up the door to start airing out the basement. While I was waiting, I sat down to check my email.

I’ve been using Mutt for several years now because it works. When I went to switch into one of my mailboxes, Mutt quit on me. It never does that. I tried a couple more times, each time Mutt would unexpectedly die. Then I noticed that several terminal windows that were opened had closed as well. I tried to start them up again and they would quit on me.

I’m going to cut to the chase at this point- the computer crashed on me. Badly. I can’t even get the OS to boot now. At that point, the Wife returned home and declared that the odor had filled up the house. Great. We started opening windows to try and flush the smell. After about an hour, and a cold lunch, the smell still hadn’t dissipated. So she packed up the kids and the parrots and went to her parent’s place while I stuck around to monitor the odor.

I did get some more of the drawer done- finished the dovetailing and started getting the bottom glued up. But dealing with the house was the main issue. I couldn’t smell anything in the house so I started closing windows so I could also start warming the house back up. Unfortunately, the basement still smelled, but I had to close it up as well so I could start warming it up down there too. We’ll probably have to air it out again tomorrow.

As for my computer, I haven’t gotten to it yet. But I’ll have to get to it quickly. There’s a lot of data on it, our email most importantly. I hope that it can be set to right quickly. The motherboard is about 10 years old, so I’m fearful that it finally gave up the ghost. I won’t know until I can spend some time with it.

The Wife arrived back with the kids and parrots around 9 or so. I’d missed an
open window in the boy’s room, so it was still cold upstairs when we put the kids down. The temp had fallen to 12 outside by that point. Even though I’d kept the fireplace going all day, it was taking time to get everything warmed up again. As I’m typing this, the temp in the house just got to 70. This whole thing started at 11 this morning. It’s 11PM now.

Tomorrow isn’t far away. And it’s another day.