#1314 furnace troubles, a matinee and prepping for the feast

This morning when I woke up, it smelled like something in the house was burning. There was a terrible burnt smell up in my bedroom and throughout the top floor. I freaked out a little. and by that I mean I demanded that MT (who went to work today) go down to the first floor and check everything and into the basement to see what was burning. We didn't smell or see smoke, but we sure smelled the burnt smell. MT investigated the whole house, but couldn't find anything except that our furnace filter was dirty. He demanded that I buy a new one when I went to the store. (I was not working today.) We opened up some windows upstairs to air the place out a bit. MT left for work and I went to the store.

Had to step away for a minute. Osi had a seizure :(

Where was I? Oh, yeah, the store. I was there early enough that it wasn't totally crazy, but there were still more people there than I expected for 8:30 am. No furnace filter at the first store, so I had to go to another store. Got the filter; went home and put it in the furnace, then it was time to take my car to the shop. When I bought it, there were a few things that needed to be fixed that were still under warranty, so I had those taken care of today. T and Trent picked me up at the dealership and we went to see a movie. I'll write more about that in a minute.

When we got home after the movie, the temperature in the house was down to 64 degrees which was just a few degrees warmer than it was outside but the furnace wasn't running. The house was not being heated. I called a repair place that we've used before and they sent a technician over to diagnose the problem. The control board was fried. The control board in the furnace is similar to the mother board in a computer. All the wires that run the furnace connect to it and it runs the furnace. It's about six inches long and maybe four inches wide. The burn mark on the board was about the size of a silver dollar. The control board is pretty easy to replace, but sadly, the tech didn't have a control board that would work for my furnace on hand. He'll have one on Friday morning, but in the meantime, no heat for us. Thank God we are not in a blizzard like on the east coast! The temperature tomorrow is supposed to be very similar to today and with the stove and oven working and a space heater here and there, I've been comfortable in the house today. Bummer though. That was $500 I wasn't expecting to spend today.

What with all the running around and fretting about the furnace, I didn't do as much prepping for tomorrow's meal as I intended. Oh well. It will be fine. I did get some things done, and I feel like I'll still be in good shape for tomorrow because we'll be eating later in the day.

Jake and Linda, my father and mother-in-law, arrived this evening in time for dinner. I roasted a couple of chicken breasts with some mushrooms and garlic. When it was cooked, I cut the chicken into small pieces and put all the roasted yumminess into some creamy tomato basil pasta sauce I got at Trader Joe's. I cooked up some spaghetti noodles and we had a tasty and easy pasta dish for our meal.

After that I spent an hour on the phone with my BFF LA. Her husband bought his dream car today, a new(ish) Camaro. They were pretty excited.

Now about that movie...T, Trent and I went to see Horrible Bosses 2.  Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis are funny and Jason Bateman is funny too, but in a straight-man kind of way. They have come up with a product to sell and are going to start their own company where they will NOT be horrible bosses. They get involved with a big distribution company that's run by Christoph Waltz and Chris Pine, who are father and son. When the deal goes bad, the guys come up with the idea to kidnap Rex (Chris Pine). Along the way, Kevin Spacey sort of advises them (from prison, where he ended up after the last film), Jennifer Aniston spices things up in a creepy/sexy way and Jamie Fox is back as M.F. Jones, too. Hilarity and some cringe-worthy moments ensue. I think I liked this one a little better than the first one. Charlie Day is my favorite of the three. His voice and the things he says are hilarious. I love love love Chris Pine, but he was definitely not the good guy in this one. Still cute, though.

Well, it's been a big day for me, so I better get to bed. Talk to you tomorrow!