My furnace is kaput

At least I think it is. All I really know is that when I turn on the thermostat and set it to a comfortable temperature, I get cold air coming from the vents. As a man who knows just enough about HVAC technology to turn nuisances into full-blown catastrophes, I took off the service panel and poked around, testing connections and hoping for the best. No catastrophe. But no luck either.

Normally a malfunctioning furnace is the least of one’s worries in Florida. But the weekend was a bit chilly and the problem has been difficult to ignore. Tomorrow it’s supposed to be back in the mid-70s and so I’d tend to ignore the problem for awhile longer. But we’ve got guests from Cuba arriving next week. I suspect their tolerance for cold mornings might be even less than the wife’s. So now I’m forced to call in the pros.

Ugh. I really hate doing that. You pay $85 just to have them show up, then parts and labor is extra. Usually a lot extra. And the solution always turns out to be something I might have been able to handle myself, if only I’d taken one of those HVAC repair courses advertised on late-night TV — a lot more useful, it turns out, than history or English literature. Ah, the road not taken.

Well, we wanted a stately older home. It goes with the territory, I reckon. Money normally set aside for good food and wine goes instead to boring necessities like keeping old furnaces running. This in what I’m guessing is the hottest state in the union. A tragic irony. And now I’d better go find the checkbook.