Celebrate the Small Things: Batteries and Ice Packs

Still setting up wiring on left and carpet needs to be re-tacked

I almost hesitate to call this a small thing. My husband and I are enjoying a brand new fireplace, one that I never dreamed possible until now. It is gorgeous! I have spent untold hours this past week just staring at the flames and enjoying the toasty warm heat. Two weeks ago we were relying on an electric fireplace to supplement the heat downstairs, which was quite pretty to look at but a joke at putting out heat when the temperature dipped.

I live in a five-year-old, two-story home, with a natural gas furnace in the attic. You would think that is a marvelous thing at first . . . no furnace room in the basement to deal with, no furnace in the garage taking up valuable space. Imagine all that free space! But who would have thought a furnace in the attic would be a factor in heat distribution, which it absolutely is? Part of the problem has been the poorly designed duct work. It never occurred to us that duct vents in the ceiling would be a problem. Duh . . . heat rises! Consequently, our feet froze on the bottom floor and it was too warm on the top level. Great in the summer when air conditioning kicks in, but a disaster in the winter. Problem solved with our new gas fireplace.

Now here is the small thing I'm really excited about: BATTERIES. Due to a minor problem with the installation (a tile section arrived cracked and a replacement is en route), our pilot light has been operating on batteries for the past week. Once the tile piece arrives, the fireplace will be AC wired permanently. In the meantime, the delay has allowed us to operate the fireplace on batteries, which we were quite curious about since we were told the fireplace would operate in a power outrage. It does!

We occasionally get power outages in the Pacific Northwest that, if bad enough (as happened in the Midwest recently), can last up to two weeks. My mother was without power on the west side for this long, but had a gas fireplace that (operating without the AC fan) kept her quite warm. Just an hour and a half to our north in Spokane, an ice storm came through one year that put a large number of homes out of power for as long. Yay . . . we now have backup!!

Here is another small thing to celebrate this
week. ICE PACKS! I slipped on our driveway this week, hit my head and bruised my elbow. Thankfully, no concussion or anything serious, but I am black and blue and have a headache. It all started out as a walk on a bright, sunny day. I failed to see the black ice. Ee--eh! I'm back to using my tried and true treadmill . . .



Celebrate.... is the brainchild of Viklit at Scribblings of An Aspiring Author. You can join, too. Go ahead, sign up below and meet some terrific writers and bloggers!

What are you celebrating this week?

Copyright 2014 © Sharon Himsl