Friday, February 02, 2007

What a week!

This has been quite a week! It started out really good, had a few sales, judged the West Side High School Art Show(AND got paid!), and I was interviewed by the Albuquerque Journal for the show.

Then, on Wednesday, our gas went out because the city is doing construction on our street. I will try to post the photos I took later. We're talking major construction, they are replacing all the sewer, water, gas and drainage lines in our neighborhood. So, anyway, there was a huge 20 foot deep hole in front of our driveway on Wednesday. Felt like an earthquake with all the heavy machinery out there. So, on with the story, the utility company came out in the evening to turn our gas back on and light our pilot lights. The guy goes to light the furnace and comes out to tell my husband he can't light our pilot light because we have a cracked heat exchanger! If he were to light it, the furnace would dump carbon monoxide into our house and kill us in the middle of the night! So, here it is, middle of winter, and we are without heat! We have two electric space heaters for the two bedrooms and thank God for our fireplace in the living room! We are hoping that our homeowners insurance will cover it, but who knows because our insurance guy hasn't returned our call yet(after two days!).

So, I may have to have a blow out sale to earn some money for a new heater. We have decided that no matter what happens, we are going to replace the gas furnace with solar heat panels, but that will cost about twice as much. Cheaper in the long run though, and better for the environment.

Anyway, it never fails, when things are going well, something always comes along to bring you back down to earth! Luckily, the snow is past and it's supposed to be warming up into the 50s this coming week.

4 comments:

Cynthia said...

OH My Gawd! I feel for you. It certainly feels like "when it rains, it pours" is an accurate description of what's going on in your life right now.

I do think going solar is wise too. I wish we would have done that when we remodeled last year. I think there are tax breaks associated with installing solor panels. Keep us posted.

BTW, congratulations on your art successes in the past week!

Paula Manning-Lewis said...

Thanks Cynthia, yeah, you could say it's pouring!! Really, it's not that bad, I guess it could be worse. At least we have a fireplace!

Also, the interview for the art show ended up being an article and they quoted me two times! So, I was pretty excited as that is the first time I've been quoted in the newspaper!

Hopefully, this week will be much better!

Philip said...

Sorry to hear about this - I thought this was kind the lknd of thing that only happened to us (we lost our electicity on Christmas Eve the year before last!).

You could always try doing some 'action' paintings to keep warm!!

Paula Manning-Lewis said...

Thanks Philip! Yeah, I have to keep moving in my studio as it is one of the rooms not being heated right now!