Yesterday started out well enough. I woke up, on my own, stumbled into the living room and flipped on the TV. Die Hard was on. My all time favorite movie, next to The Sound Of Music of course.

I love Die Hard, not only does Bruce Willis have hair but it’s Alan Rickman’s first movie and he is hot as Hans Gruber. According to Homemade Hilarity there is a huge following of Alan Rickman fans. I can understand why. People love Alan Rickman so much that they have created this, again from Homemade Hilarity, I don’t love him that much. In fact I don’t think I love Alan Rickman at all but when he fell off the Takagi building in Die Hard, this was before CGI and all the other cool computer stuff they do in movies now, it was so cool.

In writing this I had to check out what other movies Alan Rickman was in. I thought he was in Lion King but that was Jeremy Irons. They sound the same so it’s an honest mistake. Apparently Alan Rickman has been in a lot of movies. A lot of movies I haven’t seen but many I have and have forgotten about. Remember Robin Hood? He was awesome as The Sheriff of Nottingham. Alan Rickman was also in Truly, Madly, Deeply which is a wonderfully romantic movie. And two of my other favorite movies Dogma and Galaxy Quest. The man is an icon and yet we never hear that much about him. If I ever try Netflix I have a ton of movies to start with.

So my birthday started off pretty good. After watching Die Hard I took a shower and got dressed. As I am drying my hair I notice a really funky smell coming from the heat vent. Kind of a burning plastic smell. The heat was still coming out of the vent and I couldn’t smell anything by the furnace so I didn’t think too much of this. I do this sometimes. I ignore red flags (this is how I have been able to accumulate two ex husbands). When I was talking to Grandy the night before I was loading some software onto my computer. The disc drive was making a horrible noise but the software continued to load so I just ignored the squealing. Soon enough the house fills up with this smell. It is no longer just a funky odor but now it’s beginning to smell like it could be toxic. As I am about to turn down the thermostat I hear grinding noises coming from the vent. As soon as I turned the heat off the noise stops.

So I call the plumbing and heating guys who are on speed dial. They charge a lot but they send me a Christmas card each year so it seems like a fair trade. Remember it’s Saturday so I’m gonna be paying time and a half. The guy at the shop says he will send someone over in the afternoon, it’s about 9:30am when he says this. He tells me to keep the heat off.

Since I don’t like it cold I decided to clean my oven. This may sound weird to you men reading this but self cleaning ovens clean by burning the hell out of every piece of crud that has fallen or splattered in the oven. It takes an hour with my oven so my house would remain warm for at least another hour. I don’t bother to clean my oven in the summer since it heats the house up too much. I probably could have set it to clean for two or three hours with all the burnt on cheese from frozen pizzas.

Eventually the plumber arrives. It is not the same one from the other day. They sent me an old guy. A really old and fat guy. It’s a good thing I shoveled the walk that morning or he would have never been able to get his walker through the snow. When he entered the house he was panting heavily. I was a little nervous about asking him to walk down the stairs to the basement. And even more worried about him climbing up the stairs to leave. Hopefully he wouldn’t have to haul anything heavy.

After working extremely hard for five minutes he shouted up the stairs for me to come down. It would have been nice if he knew my name rather than shouting “hey you” but I’ve answered to worse. I ran down the stairs just as my electrician was arriving. He noticed the plumbers van and made some comment that I might be cursed. The plumber yelled for me again and I started down there as the phone was ringing. Rather than answer it I just threw the phone to my electrician and had him handle it.

Once downstairs the plumber said he didn’t know what was wrong with my furnace. He said it could be many things but he wasn’t sure. He said it was old (like I couldn’t tell that, the damn directions are carved hieroglyphics) but he could replace the motor for $800 to get me through the season. Or I could buy a new furnace for $2500 and my right arm. As he is telling me this he decides to check the filter. He pulls it out and asks me how often I have changed it.

I’m busted so I lie.

“At the beginning of the season.” I tell him.

“You have to change it every month.” He reprimands me.

In actuality I have never changed the filter. And I’m pretty sure he could tell. I have lived in this house for nearly two years. I didn’t know I was supposed to change the filter. I didn’t know there was a filter. Who knows these things? No one told me about it when I bought the house. I don’t think the furnace at my other house had a filter, though I can’t be too sure since I didn’t know where the furnace was in the old house.

While I am hanging my head in shame my electrician comes down to the basement. He takes over and starts talking to the rotund plumber who wants to take all my money and make me feel like an idiot at the same time. This has been my electricians job and I don’t think he wants to give it up just yet. They start to argue over who gets to fix the dumb ass homeowners problems. I leave them to duke it out and head upstairs.

My electrician wins and sends the plumber on his way. After escorting the plumber out my electrician tells me that my son called and needs a ride home from his geek class. So I grab my keys, which reminds me that I wanted to ask my electrician to help me jump my car since I had no luck the other day.

“Sure, let’s take a look.” he says.

I had tried to start the car only a few hours earlier with no luck. My electrician asks me to pop the hood and to try to start it. He is looking for the battery (which is housed in a plastic casing which is impossible to open when it’s -20 out). He finds the case and removes it. That is all he has done. He has touched the case of the battery, that’s it, nothing more. The car fires right up.

My electrician tries to make me feel like less of a doofus by saying he fiddled with the connections but I know he is lying. It is me that is the problem. I do not do well with machines of any kind. They hate me. I don’t know why. I like machines, I treat them with respect and awe, except of course for the furnace which I completely took for granted. I am ashamed.< br />
So I go and retrieve my son from geek class and leave my electrician to fix everything in my house. When we return my lights are all working and my electrician has even taken apart the furnace to check out the bearings (I have no idea what those are but he says they are good). He tells me that he thinks it is fine but to be safe I should get another co2 alarm. He then draws me a picture of how the furnace works and why he is concerned about carbon monoxide.

So I have one more thing to worry about but other than that my house is warm again and I have lights after 4 months of not having any. I am grateful and if I were to have anymore kids I would almost name one of them after him. I won’t because he has the same name as ex #2 but maybe a middle name?

I never celebrated my birthday. I was too busy feeling like a complete moron to get into a festive mood. Today I am celebrating my 29th birthday for the 15th time.