Cold, cold, cold

They're calling this a Polar Vortex. That sounds about right. It got darn cold last night. I haven't heard the official temperature yet, but it was probably 15-20f below zero.

After having work called off for both Jane and myself yesterday, Jane had to go in today her normal hours. Of course, when she got there, the phones and computers didn't work. I didn't have to go in until 1 pm today (because of the weather).

The day started off, though, with us waking up and the temperature was only 61 inside our house. The thermostat is set on 68. The furnace wasn't running, so I went down and checked the circuit breakers. They were fine, so I switched the reset button on the furnace. It started running, but shut off before it had warmed up very much. In the meantime, I turned on our gas stove and opened the door slightly. That helped warm it up a little. I then changed the battery in the thermostat and reset it again. It worked a little, but not normal. So I finally called the place that installed and services the furnace. They kind of told me there wasn't much they could do, at least until tomorrow, and that it might just be too cold. So I pulled the entire thermostat off the wall and checked it out, then plugged it back in. It seemed to actually work better after that. Tonight it still seems to be working, but it is a balmy 5 degrees ABOVE zero now.

So, anyway, it took me 50 minutes to drive the 13 miles to work. The roads were TERRIBLE. In fact, the news people said they were worse today than yesterday. It was like a sheet of ice. People had trouble taking off from stoplights.

When I got to work I figured it would be slow, because why would anyone be out and about. However, we were swamped the whole day. It was nuts. I'm glad we only worked 1-5:30. Getting home wasn't any better than going there. The roads are still really bad. It is supposed to warm up tomorrow, so hopefully the salt will start to work on the roads and they can get them cleaned off a little better.

I hate winter. At least our cars both started.