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Thunder and snow

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Early Thursday afternoon I was sitting at my computer working on a post for one of my blogs and I noticed that the snow storm that had been supposed to start Wednesday night had finally started.

The snow was coming down like it was making up for lost time. There was easily half a foot or more within 30 minutes.

It was still below freezing at the time – -1 Celsius (which is just below 32 F), but we’d been expecting freezing rain so I knew that it might warm up a little. Conditions outside would be pretty hazardous if we got freezing rain.

Then, at about 1:30 pm guess what I heard? Thunder? Yeah, it thundered on and off for about ten minutes. I didn’t see any lightning but there might have been some somewhere.

I had heard that we’d had thunder and lightning a few days ago too, but I’d missed that.

Considering that I live in the great white north it’s pretty strange to experience thunder in the winter time. Especially if there’s snow on the ground or even more surprisingly if it happens to be snowing when the thunder is heard.

That was strange enough, but worse was yet to happen.

I think it was around 5:30 pm when I realized that my internet connection was down. I’d just sent an email and as far as I know it got sent off ok, but all of a sudden I couldn’t reach websites I’d been trying to get to and my email program was just spinning and not collecting mail.

So I thought to myself … ok, it’ll probably be down for just a little while. I’ll turn on the TV and select whatever I’m going to record on the DVR.

Oh oh … Can’t do that either. The cable box came on, and so did the TV, but the television just has a blank screen. Well .. a black screen. That worried me because I thought maybe our DLP TV had failed again … but when I tried to change the channels I could see the channel info box come up on the TV so I knew it was working. It was just the cable that wasn’t.

I called the cable company and yes, the connections were down in my area. When I was speaking to them they were just sending a truck out to fix the problem so they didn’t know if it was weather related, a simple problem or if perhaps a car had crashed into their equipment. The latter would result in quite a delay in repairs. I was told it usually takes about four hours when they have to fix connections for an area, but depending upon whatever caused the problem I might not have had a connection for a long time.

I filled my time writing up a few posts in Notepad and reading a book. I’m so used to sitting at the computer and working on my sites during the day and often early evening that it felt really strange to not be able to do that.

I got my internet and cable TV connections sometime late in the evening. I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that both services don’t go out at the same time again!

Now if you’ve come here for PHOTO HUNTERS perhaps I’ll take a photo of the melting snow on the slushy streets later today. I think during heavy snow and ice storms they still do use some salt in the mix of what they put on your streets to melt the snow .. and that’s the only way I’m going to be able to get anything for the Salty theme on this blog today. LOL






The night our furnace almost died

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Last winter our furnace almost died.

This is probably one of the top fears that anyone living in a cold climate has each winter. When the furnace starts up for the first time each autumn, if you are like my husband and I, you listen to make sure it sounds ok and that it’s working properly. You do this even if you took advantage of your heating or furnace companies offer to do a yearly check up on your furnace – as we do each summer.

I believe that it was late in the evening one day last January. The furnace came on, but it was making a noise that I’d never heard it make before. My husband and I went downstairs to take a look and neither of us liked the sound it was making. We called our furnace maintenance man. (We actually have his home number) He didn’t like what we were describing and he came over right away.

There was something wrong. We have a late 80’s oil furnace. Yes we should replace it soon .. but I don’t dare say that out loud or else the furnace will probably stop working! I can’t remember the name of the part we needed, but it was the main mechanism that helps the furnace ignite and produce heat.

As I said our furnace is getting on the old side and it’s hard to find parts. Our furnace man started searching for a replacement part right away and I think he found a rebuilt part about a day and a half later. It took a couple of hours to install. I’m keeping our fingers crossed that nothing like this happens again – at least not in the dead of winter.

Now, here’s something that’s kind of ironic. I just visited a site called FurnaceCompare.com. I only wish that I’d known about this site last winter as it was looking like we’d need to install a new furnace until they lucked into finding the part that we needed.

You see, you can go to FurnaceCompare.com and use the search function to look up furnaces by make and or model number. I know that we will probably get a new furnace in the next year or two so I’m going to bookmark this site so that when I want to do some research on the various furnace models I’ll be able to visit this site again and learn quite a bit about the brands and models that I’m interested in.

Just for the heck of it I decided to do a search for Carrier furnaces.

I hear that brand advertised often in my area so I thought that was a good place to start. When I selected Carrier and hit the search button I ended up with a list of 1914 furnaces! Beside each model number there was a brief description of what type of furnace it was (natural gas, horizontal flow, weatherproof), Condensing furnace and it’s electrical phase. You can also click in the furnace model area to get a detailed report about that particular furnace or compare it with similar makes and models.

The site is easy to use and organize but I was frustrated that I would have to purchase a subscription in order to read a detailed report about the furnace model that I choose to view. I think that a partial report should be available to people who have registered with the site but haven’t purchased a subscription. As a home owner just searching for information I found this frustrating. I did like the comparison information area though.

I think it would also be a great idea if the search results could be re-organized in the way that the searcher wanted to see them. For example – I currently have an oil furnace. I know that not that many companies make them these days but they are still out there. Rather than completely changing my whole heating system over to gas I might be interested in searching for only oil furnaces but I couldn’t define my search terms or re-order the search result list to suit my needs.

Otherwise I found the site fairly user friendly and there are a lot of resource articles for the consumer to read such as “Buying a Furnace” or “Buying Central A/C”.

There is also a large list of companies that make furnaces, Air conditioning systems and boilers which included information about the company and the products that they manufacture as well as contact information for each business. I found that to be extremely useful information.

I’m going to bookmark this site as it might be useful when the time comes to replace our current furnace. Visit FurnaceCompare.com if you’re looking for a new furnace, A/C or a boiler.

Get up to 10 percent back on your online shopping

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I think that just about everyone tries to look for discounts, or purchase items when they are on sale. Don’t they? I mean money doesn’t grow on trees. I only wish it did since I seem to be a fairly successful gardener. No. If you’re like me you work hard for your money and you try to make it go as far as it will take you.

If you like saving money and even getting some money back when you shop for items that you need you’re going to love this site that I just visited. It’s called BondRewards and it pays you back 3x more than any of the other reward programs.

This is a unique shopping reward program. BondRewards pays you back in US Savings Bonds. This program was designed to help Americans save their money. When you shop at one of the 100’s of stores that are listed at BondRewards you’ll get points that will built up towards a free US Savings Bond. Collect 50 points and you’ll get a free savings bond.

BondRewards has paid out over $200K already and they’re looking forward to helping more people earn rewards. The top 500 stores on the internet are listed with them, and when you click on the “Shop” button you can scroll through the list of stores to see which ones offer the highest reward savings.

It’s almost Spring and many of us are starting to think about purchasing items for our home and garden. Whether it’s patio furniture, garden decor or home furnishings you’ll be able to find savings and rewards for all of those items through BondRewards. Visit the site today and start saving your money.

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