The O-Zone

Well, I guess that depends on what level of technology it is you’re talking about, so need to qualify this subject.

New technology is great, except when you rely on it. Fortunately we have contingency plans since you can really only count on new technology to fail when it most inconvenient.

First example. Our gas range using new technology and electronics has had the glow bar/ignitor in the oven portion fail intermittently over the last couple of months. This is exceedingly dangerous when it decides to fail in the middle of baking something, as a small amount of propane gas leaks into the oven, where it accumulates.   And depending on how long that situation continued, an explosion is unlikely but not impossible.  It’s just dangerous and stupid to keep fooling with it.    We called a repair man.

So while we wait for a new part to be procured and installed (two weeks and counting), our old technology wood cookstove is doing the baking for us. It’s way more fiddly, needing to check on the temperature in the oven frequently and adjust the amount of wood in the fire box.

We would use the cookstove a lot more this winter had we had a good supply of firewood. Unfortunately the man who had been delivering firewood to us turned out to be fundamentally dishonest, or just an idiot. And seriously, it is really hard to tell the difference with that guy.

So we made the decision to focus on wood pellets and not try to find a new source of firewood this year.   All of which means we’ve been saving the small amount of firewood we did purchase in the fall for really cold weather, intending to use the cookstove to supplement our other sources of heat.   And this winter we are relying on our new technology wood pellet stove in the living room for our main heat source, but because we’re not idiots we also have two propane wall furnaces as a back up heat source. And we had the propane company bring us another large tank of propane to enable us to use them if we needed to.

Second example. The wood pellet stove we bought late last winter when we ran out of firewood, as a direct correlation to dealing with the ‘idiot,’ had an ignitor fail within the first month we had the stove installed.  No ignitor, no heat.

Ok…hmmmmmm, manufacturing mistakes can happen.

A new ignitor was installed promptly and everything has been going along swimmingly since then. Until the middle of last night when the ignitor failed again. Hmmmmmm. Sunday… how convenient.

So, propane heat to the rescue with the old technology cookstove providing some additional heat, and baking sweet potatoes at the same time. Maybe I’ll make some pizza too 🙂 or muffins for the parrots. They’d like that, little piggies that they are.

We’ll call the company who sold us the wood pellet stove tomorrow morning and hope they can bring us a new part post haste.  Propane wall heaters to the rescue until that happens.

On the plus side, the kitchen is nice and cozy and my laptop is portable 🙂

I finished a knitting project I started a couple of days ago. I bought beads last August when we were in Spokane doing something, planning on making a new knitted purchase. I hadn’t tried this particular color combination before and like it a lot.

So now I’m back to working on a vest I started a long time ago using yarn my friend Diana made. I am not using a pattern so I have to do some counting stitches and rows before I continue with the second side of the front. Having the two front pieces match is preferable. I love the colors of this yarn – they remind me of Terry’s feather colors.

We’ll see how long that resolution lasts.  Probably just until I see something shiny.

A Bald Eagle just flew by the house; the parrots told us about it.