The Partner David has always done the heavy house stuff around here. Not that I cannot do it, but he has always just done it and I have complied. Among these things are the maintenance of the boilers for the heat.
As any of you New Englanders know, we had a beautiful April - warm, sunny and just overall gorgeous. May, so far, has been less than stellar. In fact, this week it has been pretty cold. But David decided to shut off the boilers last weekend. This would not normally be a problem, because if there was a sudden need for heat, he would take care of it.
However, if you see my last entry, David was not around this week. When I got home from the hospital on his first day of chemotherapy (gone at hospital all day), I discovered a very cold home, with a shivering Bird. I realized quickly what was wrong, what I was unsure of how to deal with it.
I went to the basement and sure enough the boilers were not lit. I opened them up (after wrestling with the cover for a bit and losing a screw someplace in the process), and read the instructions. On first pass, they might as well have been in ancient Hebrew. However, on closer examination, I noticed that the main components were numbered. These numbers mapped back to the instructions, very similar to the LCD display on the copy machine at the office telling you where the paper gets jammed. I was hopeful, but when it came time to light the pilot, it would not light. Instead, all I could do was smell gas. Panicked, I decided to abort (and go to bed wearing sweats).
When David was more coherent, he showed me how to light the Pilot. Now, in my defense, the hole to stick in the match is not the same as the one marked in the instructions, and had it been, I would have succeeded.
But it made me realize that I am pretty clueless.
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