Warmth on a Gloomy Day
Northwest Natural showed up this afternoon and turned our gas back on. We now have hot water, heat, and a working fireplace. Strangely, over the weekend, we had to open the windows because of excessive heat. I was able to turn on enough computers, TVs, and lights to get the house up to 70° F, which sure beat buying electric heaters. I have no doubt that our electric bill will be quite high.
Having no hot water turned out to be the hardest thing to deal with. We utilized Kara’s parents for their showers, which we appreciated immensely, but the whole thing just felt off. We’re not out of money, we aren’t between homes, but we had to use someone else’s shower; it just seemed wrong. I’ve realized that any of my dealings with Northwest Natural will always be tainted by this one experience. I had no real reason to trust them before (I had no idea who they really were), but now I do have a reason to mistrust them.
The rest of the day was rather gloomy. I never had a clear look at the sun and the rain, wind, and rolling clouds dropped my spirit, as well as my office mates, for most of the day. I did have some success toward the end of the day when Kara came in for a visit and a tour, I got my 401(k) account setup with a wonderfully nice fellow, PHP decided to bend to my will and properly open and display TrueType fonts in an image created with the GD library, and I had Chicken Flauta Rancheros at Who Song and Larry’s across from my lovely wife.
Now I plan on taking a (piping) hot shower and think about the benefits and drawbacks of utilizing automation classes in PHP that generate Database Access classes based on user-defined XML files.