Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Reversing the cycle

My ducted gas heating broke two days ago. I say broke; I got home from grocery shopping to find the house stinking of burned something or other. Plastic? Not sure. Anyway, sniffed around every room, the smell was everywhere. Didn't seem to come from the dishwasher (which sometimes smells nasty if a wood or plastic implement falls onto the heating element and burns) or the dryer - in fact the laundry (which does not have a heating vent) was the only room that didn't smell. I turned off the heat and aired out the house. It is nearly winter here in Canberra, and the temperature dropped to 14 degrees C pretty quickly. Just to make sure, I turned the ducted gas on again for a little while, the smell returned. So off it went again.

I work from home, and spent the afternoon huddled in blankets in front of my computer. At first I could only get a repair man out Wednesday week, 9 days of frozen toes!, but luckily they called back after they had a cancellation and can fit me in today - so only 48 hours. If they can fix it right away, of course.

So, we all had a pretty cold night, but then the next morning I was telling my friend Caroline about the broken ducted gas. 'But you have reverse cycle air conditioning as well don't you?'

'Um, yes, that cools us down in summer.'

Um, duh. Apparently, reverse cycle means it also heats. Mainly only warms the lounge, not the whole house, but at least it's not 14 degrees C in here any more.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Ta ta tum tum

I'm back! I still live.

So, today I learned that it was Queen Victoria who started the tradition of walking down the aisle in a fluffy white dress. My source was the book Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert. Some very interesting information about Western marriage traditions in there.