The Battle of the Furnace

It all began on a Monday night. I'm lying in bed when I notice that the furnace is turning on and off, and on and off. I'm wondering what wrong with the thing now. I know the blower motor is good because I just replaced the thing a few months back. I listened to it try a few more times and then went and turned the heat down so maybe it could rest for a second.

When I woke up the next day I never heard the furnace come on at all. The house was right where I set it at on the thermostat so I figured it may have gotten over whatever ailed it. I doubted it but I hoped. The test would be what the temperature what when we got home from work.

After we got home from work I went straight to the thermostat and confirmed my suspicions as the temperature had dropped to 59 degrees and I didn't hear anything from the furnace. So I tore the thing open again to see what I could find. My father in law was spending the night so he hooked me up with a guy that works for an A/C place in St. George. I talked to him for a bit and toyed with several things. He figured it must have been the control board. So he ordered one for me and had me go pick it up. I brought the thing home the next day thinking that this should fix all our woes. I matched the connections from the old board and had to do a little custom wiring job to get the old connections to fit with the new layout of the board. I snipped a few wires and used a few heat shrink connectors. After everything was hooked back up I tried it again and lo the exhaust fan kicks on. The ignitor kicks on. The flame fires up and then immediately goes out and the process starts over again until after the third time it just gives up. The error code from the light blames it on another part, but I know it's good.....now what. I call the guy back and he's stumped so I'm sent to another tech at the same place. I talked to him for 4 /12 hours testing connections. Plugging and unplugging things.....the works. Finally he has me play with the gas valve. It doesn't show any ohms dancing across that connection. So he figures it's a gas valve. A day or two goes by and he can't find anyone that is open to get me a gas valve so he has me start calling places. No one will sell one to me because I'm not licensed and there are restrictions on such things.

My mom called me and in the process I mentioned I'd like to have the furnace working. I guess I forgot to tell her things weren't being nice to me. Christmas was only a day or two away and we had no furnace. It was a good test of our new windows though! The coolest it got in the house was 50 degrees and after using a little space heater for a little while we were able to average about 65 degrees or so. With several space heaters and heat lamps on we got it back up to 70! I'm sure the electric bill will reflect that. Anyway my mom spread the news and I had family members coming out of the woodwork. My aunt and uncle brought us heaters. My cousins husband came over and helped find a gas valve and someone to pick it up. He then installed the thing and after all that it had the same response. So I talked to his HVAC guy and I replaced the flame rod. After replacing basically every part that can be replaced (with the exception of one) and not having any results I broke down and had the HVAC friend come and look at the thing Christmas eve. He gave me a 50% discount and charge only 50 per hour. Considering it took him probably 10 seconds to find the problem it was an FML moment. Apparently with the new control board there was an extra connector that I was unaware of that plugs into the board and has an extra wire the plugs into another spot on the board. After the connection was made it fired right up.

I don't know everything there is to know about Furnaces but I know more about my furnace now than I did previously. We have basically a brand new furnace so hopefully it lasts at least a year this time before something gives out again on me. I'm just so grateful that my family helped out where they could and that our new windows are as epic as they are!

California Howdy

So this morning we were on our way to work. Traffic was about average on the way in. Nothing out of the usual. We are puttering along and there is a truck trying to merge onto the freeway. I recognized it as one of the people that works in the same building as me. I sped up to get out of the way. My wife waved and then said "She just flipped you off!" This person didn't come across as someone that would do that. I didn't let it bother me. Anyone that is nasty to the person that supports their computer systems is asking for it!

We pulled in shortly after this person did and parked. I could see she was really embarrassed as we pulled up. I started laughing. I could see she knew it was us and felt bad. We met her in the foyer to the building and she apologized. She said she was having a bad morning and sort of took it out on us. She said she never does that it was just a bad morning and after she voted us number one she realized we were just trying to get out of the way. We just laughed and said not to worry about it.

Moral of the story is be careful who you flip off on the freeway. You never know who it may be!

Sorenson's Got Talent

My wife had a company Christmas party the other night. They were serving dinner and afterward having a little talent show with a few prizes for the winners. A lot of people knew that my wife could sing.....they just didn't know that she could SING! Most of the talents were just kinda funny things. Not really a serious competition by any means. My wife was concerned that her talent wasn't a goofy talent like the rest. I told her not to worry about it and go knock them flat.

I've always enjoyed hearing my wife sing. It's even better when she has the element of surprise because I can face watch. The music starts and I start looking around the room. I'm pretty sure every person in the room dropped their jaw. A few eyes bugged out like a Volkswagen and a few "Oh my gosh!" and other expressions were uttered. I love watching reactions. After my wife had whipped out her opera song most people stood up and clapped (something no one else got).

She got 10's from all three judges. The first judge said "That was great but I couldn't understand you Spanish." The song is Italian. The rest commented on how great it was and that it just wasn't expected. Especially with how the rest of the talent show was going. She won $100 and the first place trophy to Sorenson's Got Talent 2012! That's two shows she has won so far :). People have been commenting on it for the last several days. It won't be long before we are banned from competitions at work because we keep winning.

The Biggest Fat Loser

So my company recently had a contest. They called it the biggest fat loser because they wanted to focus on losing the most about of fat and not muscle mass as well. They had Deni Hill (Winner of season 10's at home biggest loser) talk to us as well as take measurements and whatnot.

My wife hooked up with Deni and her program. I'm proud to say she has lost 25 pounds so far (and still going strong :)). I joined purely to help support her and encourage her along the way. The contest was to run for 6 weeks. They had a grand prize of a 32" HDTV and they mentioned some other little giveaways as well. We started eating better and watching things a little more. Again I was just along for the party and to encourage my wife to do her best. We were delighted as she was able to see a difference as well as fit into clothes that used to be to small for her.

Eventually the day came for the final weigh in and measurements. We didn't pay a lot of attention to me as I didn't have a lot of body fat % to start with. After they did all the calculations and whatnot to figure out who lost what % of body fat they announced the winners. They took their time announcing the first place winner as they we pretty surprised who had lost the biggest percentage. They said this person did this solely to support his spouse.....I couldn't believe it......I was first place. I lost 17% of my body fat. I hadn't changed a lot of how I ate other than my wife stopped putting full sticks of butter in her cooking. I was doing a little better eating but nothing drastic. So I ended up winning the TV. Now I have a second monitor for my computer....I now have a 32" HDTV as a primary monitor and a 23" LED monitor as my secondary monitor....I'm spoiled.

The Battle of the AC

Last week we noticed that it was getting a little warmer in the house, and I realized that I hadn't heard the AC kick in on awhile. Occasionally there was an odd buzzing sound and then it quit, but I just though my wife was doing laundry and it was the obnoxious buzzer on the dryer. By about ten at night we looked at the thermostat and it was reading somewhere in the upper 80's or so. The buzzing was the AC trying to come on without any success. I ventured downstairs to see what I could find and discovered ice on the pipe leading to the furnace. I figured that we'd give it a night to thaw out and see if that was the deal.

The next day I left for work and didn't think much of it. I got home and noticed that the ice had all melted and figured I'd see if it would fire up again. It wanted to. I could hear it thinking about it, but not much had changed. I just turned it off and figured we'd deal with it later. Funds are low and looking at parts it was going to be more than a couple of bucks to get anything. I had a friend come over and tear into the furnace to see what the deal was. The blower motor was pretty toasty and had about an inch of fur and dust bunnies on it. After clearing it all off and slapping it all back together the blower would come on and give a slight breeze through the nearest vent but that was all it would muster. It was so tired it wanted to be retired. Not having the funds we'd have to suffer in the heat.

Not having AC means the house is going to be hotter than outside during the day. Luckily we have a basement that is about 10-20 degrees cooler than upstairs so we lived down there. It got to a point where even downstairs was approaching 80 degrees or so. I was mentioning not having AC to a coworker who happened to owe us a favor. She volunteered to get the motor for us. The motor showed up yesterday!

After work yesterday afternoon I ripped into the furnace (after studying on youtube of course). I took a pile of pictures so if I really screwed it up I'd have something to run off of as far as what wire went where. After sweating away for an hour or so I had managed to pull out the old motor and stuff the new one in. There was one problem. One of the motor braces didn't quite line up with the hole the screw was supposed to go in. I was hot and sweaty and getting pretty bothered at this point so I improvised. I made it fit. The screw is now on a bit of an angle and the poor rubber bumper thinger ma-whacker is suffering a great deal but the motor is in place and it isn't moving around. Now to see if my efforts were worth anything. I made my way upstairs and turned on the thermostat to cool......nothing. I changed it from auto to on......It fired up! I turned it back to auto and cranked the temperature down to 78 or so. Glory be! I'm not as mechanically retarded as I thought. It helps me to see someone tear it apart first. I wouldn't have been comfortable trying it without having an example first. We now have AC again. The house is no longer a killer 96 degrees.

Busted Stuff

So lately it seems like everything is just breaking. I understand that trials are just a part of life, but can they get in a line and at least wait their turn? Money is tight right now because we are still forking out a good chunk of dough to a certain apartment complex for a pile of charges. They are leeches. Next thing in the line up is the tile that looked great when we first moved in now begins to get lose as chunks of grout decide to revolt and go on strike and not do it's job anymore. Next the dishwasher decides that it's given up as well. The corner part of one of the ceilings downstairs in the basement starts to sag in shame, and the icing on the crap cake is our blower motor in the furnace that supplies the AC to the house gave up the ghost as well. My wife's car drips oil like a wounded animal. It started complaining that it was low so I added two quarts to help it out and in my grace spilled a dinosaurs big toes worth all over the engine. The next day I have a partially panicked wife saying the engine is smoking. I lucked out on that one as it was just the oil I had spilled burning off the engine. It still has cosmetic damage from a month or two ago when she pulled out in front of another car when attempting to go to work. I found her another route and she doesn't take very many left turns anymore.Despite all the wonderful crap that has decided to settle into my life at this moment in time it's easy to get caught up in everything that is going wrong. The house is hot and miserable and it's painful to walk bare footed through tile with little camouflaged bits of grout just waiting to embed itself in my heel. There are blessings that have popped up here and there through it all though. A friend that owed us squared up and bought us a motor for the furnace so we no longer need to sweat to death in our own house. The in laws have been showing their support in helping us out in any way possible. We have friends that show up during mini-crisis times when your AC dies and that are willing to show you how to tear apart a furnace. Times can be tough but if you focus to much on the bitter you might just miss out on the sweet parts of life that make it feel like things will turn out ok after all. The moments that are the most painful and seem the hardest usually have the potential to help us grow the most. It's not fun or easy at the time, but later down the road when you've risen a few levels above where you were you will see that it wasn't so bad after all. They have things like Gorilla Glue that you can glue your ceiling back together with. Experience is usually only given to you after the test. "Ob-la-di, ob-la-da life goes on brah, La la how the life goes on"

The Vow

So last night we watched The Vow. This may come as a surprise but I hated it! I liked the story don't get me wrong. It was cute and everything, but what made me hate it was how I felt throughout the whole movie. I'm a guy, and that being said I place myself in the shoes of Leo. I don't know how he handled it. I mean if I were stuck in the same situation I don't know what I'd do. I LOVE my wife, but I don't know that I could have handled the way she treated him and remain sane. Of course after watching the movie my wife asks if I would have held on like he did. I lost it. I started crying like there was no tomorrow because just the thought on not having my wife remember me and everything we've been through is not something that I want to think about.....EVER!

The second the parents entered the picture I knew that I'd loathe them. Before they even said a word I knew that they were going to try and take her away from him. I'm thankful that I have the in laws that I have because I know it would never be that way.

I would love nothing more to say that I could have done what Leo did. This being based off a true story I applaud Leo and am happy that things turned out for them. I've dealt with my fair share of trials and I know there is more to come but this had better not be one of them. Life without my wife would be absolutely worthless. I know I'm far from perfect, but I try to keep my wife as happy as possible.

This is one of those rare moments when you get to see a little of the emotional side of me. I'm very much an introvert and keep most things to myself but this movie really stirred up something last night. I know it doesn't make any sense but it's one of those movies that I hate so much I kinda like it. Again I liked the story, but I was so annoyed and kinda mad the whole movie that it's not one that I would like to watch again. I recommend seeing it at least once to make you appreciate what you have.