Monday, January 18, 2010

The Temperature's Low, But Higher Than Her I.Q.

Another result of my wife's ongoing paranoia about our finances is our fighting over the thermostat. Right before she goes to bed, she will lower the thermostat to the low 60's to save energy overnight. There is only one problem; I typically stay awake about two hours longer than she. To combat this, I often turn the dial back up to the high 60's. As a side note, she is also deathly afraid that our furnace will break in the dead of winter, and we'll all freeze to death.

One night she got up around 10:30 and noticed the furnace was running and looked at the thermostat.

She. Freaked. Out.

"What are you doing?! You can't turn it up that fast! You'll break it!" she screamed.

"Break what?" I replied.

"The furnace! You have to turn it up gradually just until it turns on!"

"Do you know how this works? It's not going to make the furnace come on 'harder'. It just turns the furnace on and leaves it on until it reaches the temperature and then turns off."

"Yeah.", she said slowly.

"But that's not what you said. You thought that the furnace would blow itself up trying to get up to temperature. They aren't designed that way...", I explained.

"Whatever.", she fumed.

3 comments:

David said...

This got me laughing for a good minute!! You are a good writer my friend.

MBT said...

My freind actually installed a - second - fake thermostat where the original one was. He had them move the real one to the cellar stars where the emergency off switch was. (That switch scared the hell out of his wife - as if it was the nuclear bomb button at the Whitehouse.)
He just let her do whatever she wanted with the fake one.

Hywel said...

I have never met a woman who understands thermostats. Other than my physics undergrads, they're okay.