You know you've got a good life . . .

. . . when all you can think to complain about is a few days with no hot water and no internet connection.

No hot water? Sunday afternoon, while Dan was off listening to Puts and Schubert (see above) Mary Ellen and Katerina were shocked when the smell of oil spread through the basement and the smoke alarm sounded. A furnace repairman diagnosed the problem as a blocked flue: "Get the flue cleaned out. Don't use the furnace until you do."

"Get the flue cleaned out." Easier said than done. There's a chimney cleaner just a couple blocks from our house, as luck would have it. And, as luck would have it, he's booked solid until the end of the month. Who knew chimney sweeps were in such demand? Mary Ellen did manage to find a different chimney cleaner who said he would try to come on Monday and would certainly be here by Tuesday. He did show up Tuesday afternoon and did his thing. Unfortunately, his thing wasn't good enough. The furnace company said we still had no draft. This afternoon Dan and a friend worked on it and . . . success! (To be fair, the friend did a lot more of the work than Dan did.)

No internet connection? In late August, we ordered Verizon FIOS service for phone, internet, and TV. (What the heck, it's only money.) Verizon screwed the order up. We tried two or three more times in September. Verizon screwed those orders up too. All these orders were placed over the phone. For our last try, I decided to go up to Tysons Corner and talk to a real person face to face. That was on Wednesday, October 3. On Friday, they switched our phone service over from MCI to Verizon. No problem. Well, one problem. Our Verizon DSL connection was lost in the process. Four trips back to Tysons over the next couple days. No satisfaction, and no DSL, and no indication of when FIOS might be installed. On Monday the 8th, another trip to Tysons, asking for the phone number of Lisa's boss. Didn't get a boss, but got someone who could at least give me an installation date--October 17. Great. We're looking at another week and a half of no internet unless we can get DSL back up and running. And that is looking more and more unlikely. When I get home, a different Verizon supervisor (Kim Walker, may she live long and prosper) has called: "Apologies. We're going to install FIOS for you tomorrow." Tuesday morning, sure enough, a technician comes and installs FIOS (and does a great job of hiding the cables). Wednesday morning, phone and internet are misbehaving. I wanted to go through channels to report the problem to Verizon, but that just isn't possible. Try calling Verizon. You get a computer. "If you're calling about . . . " Arrghhhhhhh! So, I called my new best friend Kim, and she arranged to have a tech come back out today. Darned if he didn't show. (This Kim Walker must be one important woman. And no, I'm not sharing her phone number.) Thus far, everything is working well. We'll see.