A cold night in Alabama

I realize that we are over a week into the month of January, and I have a confession to make.  Rebecca and I finally got around to taking our Christmas decorations down on Saturday.  We didn't want to take them down because we are of the "purist" people.  That means we don't put up Christmas decorations until after Thanksgiving.  It seems like every year we forget just how busy December is and how hard it is to find time to put a tree up and decorate the house.  So we didn't even get our tree up until a week or two before Christmas.  After going through all of the effort, we wanted to make sure the tree and all of the decorations felt wanted, so we just left them up.

OK, now back to the story.  I put all of the boxes of decorations in the attic on Saturday afternoon.  As it got later in the evening, we got a little bit cold but didn't really think anything of it.  We just covered up in a blanket and played the new Super Mario Bros. for the Wii after Mary Beth went to bed.  (As a side note, that game is great and I think my wife is addicted.)  After I got a serious case of what I have termed "Nintendo thumb," we called it a night and went to bed.  Mary Beth woke us up crying a little before 2:00.  As I went to check on her, I decided that the house was too cold and went to crank up the thermostat.  When I did, nothing happened.  No response at all.  Dead.  Get the idea?  So we all piled up in the bed trying to get warm for the next 30 minutes, then decided that it was just too cold to sleep.  So, about 2:45, we did a quick Google search for hotels in Decatur, AL.  We couldn't justify spending much when we were only going to be there about six hours, but we didn't want to go to some shady place, either.  It's a fine line.  We ended up at the La Quinta Inn and had a warm room in which to sleep and get ready for church.  I think "La Quinta" may mean "place to go when you're thermostat doesn't work."

After church, we had a good friend who just happens to own a Heating and Cooling business come over to see what we needed to do.  I thought we might need to buy a new thermostat.  Rebecca was hoping it wasn't the entire heating unit.  After a few checks and about 10 minutes, our friend flipped a switch in the attic and told me to check the thermostat.  POWER!  HEAT!  He saved the day by turning the power on to the heating unit.  When I was putting decorations up on Saturday, I had inadvertently flipped that power switch.  So I felt like a big loser the rest of the day, but at least I was a warm loser.