Deep breath, and a sigh 'Okay..'

This house, now stripped of all of it's baubles and dusty icons seems ready to slowly let itself perish.  The furnace, which was already humming it's way to the end for most of the last couple of months, has finally died.

Sadly, this is three weeks and a day before I move.  I had two companies take a look at it, inspect it, and the prognosis is that the heat exchangers are all cracked and legally there isn't a gasfitter who would touch it without getting those replaced first.

This furnace, as with everything in this mid century monolith, is 25 old, or possibly older.  Getting parts for it can be done!  However it would take a minimum of 4 to 6 weeks depending on what company had them in stock.  A time period that outlasts my time in this haunted, creaking manor.

The alternative would be to just replace it.  Which also would take 4 weeks on special order from the US, or 4 to 8 from China...

..And also cost me between 4 thousand to 5 thousand dollars before tax and installation fees.

I'm at a point where the monetary bleeding has to be cauterized I'm afraid.  If I were staying here, I would have to swallow that bitter pill, gout a ton of money at whichever workman they sent around to install the thing, and at least take joy that I'd have a furnace that would last me until I end up in some lunatic asylum surrounded by other fogies who can't stop pulling Joker cards out of their pants.

But given that I am on my way out of here, I can't justify that kind of outflow.  Cut.  Sterilize.  Cauterize.  

As luck seems to go with me, the weather has turned much colder here.  Not 'pipe freezing' cold yet, but cold enough to where I now need to have three space heaters and a cheap, old fake-fireplace heater running 24 hours a day.  It even snowed here yesterday, which meant that I had to take my annual tumble down the front stairs while carrying a box of heavy batteries.  And I do mean that it's 'annual'.  My second official year of falling off of something in the first snow :)

I was told that good things come to good people.  If that adage is true, I must be the most rotten of the rotten souls.  A decaying saint filled with coffin nails and sinner's teeth.  For some it comes in threes, for me it's now on five.

But I make do with what I have.  I have heaters, and if I absolutely have to I can rent an industrial construction heater and run that to ensure the pipes don't frost over.  There are options.  They all suck, but they don't cost thousands for a place I'm not going to exist in after 3 weeks.

I'll probably have a cat in my lap as I work on getting some sketching done today.  I won't mind, it'll at least be warm for the both of us.

-T.J.