Miracles and Cold Weather

We got home from working at a fund raiser dinner for my kid's team last night and it felt a little chilly in our house. We live in south western NY state, the area near Buffalo, Rochester and Niagara Falls, and it's been really, really cold here this week. It was -8 but -21 with the wind chill factor (that means with the wind it feels like -21) and today was even colder. It's not the norm but it happens every now and then. It's not so cold that my kid and his buddies felt the need to put their sweatpants on over their shorts after basketball practice. I picked them up from the school and they wandered out in their shorts. They did have the decency to put on their sweatshirts though. I didn't even argue with them. In fact, I debated on turning the heater off in the van just to see how manly they felt then. I didn't though. Yet. Each of these kids are the youngest of three brothers and they are all ages 15 or 16. They weren't going to listen to me and I wasn't wasting my breath on any of them.

But I digress. We got home at 7:30 last night and it was too cold inside. I checked the thermostat and it was 60 degrees in our house. Our furnace wasn't coming on. My husband works in the heating and plumbing supply business so he has a lot of know how but he couldn't fix it this time. We had to call the Furnace Guy. The Furnace Guy is a friend and a good egg and we felt bad dragging him out in the cold at night. But we would have felt even worse if we didn't call him and froze to death. We really, really wanted heat again. He got paid for it so I don't think it bothered him for too long. It was an easy fix once they discovered the problem so he got to scurry back home to his recliner. And we got to start unwrapping our layers of blankets. Whew! Broken furnace - not good. Easy fix - very good. It may have been a nuisance to deal with but I feel very fortunate that it wasn't any worse and again count my blessings.


Miracle on the Hudson

Speaking of counting your blessings, the plane crash yesterday in NY city was tragic that it crashed but a miracle that everyone survived and there seem to be relatively few injuries. From all the accounts I have heard so far the pilot and crew did an amazing job diverting a disaster. The plane apparently hit flocks of birds after take off and damaged the engines. The pilot and co-pilot attempted to return to the nearest airport but couldn't make it so they had to land in the Hudson River. Witnesses said it was a perfect landing and all 155 people survived. All of the rescue personnel performed their jobs remarkably well. If you have to be in a crash it sounds like this pilot is the man to be flying your plane. With a 20 year career in the Air Force flying fighter planes, a 30 year career with US Airways and a variety of even more very impressive credentials he was the man for the job. A Facebook page was created for him before the day was even over! It was so very nice to hear something good in the news for a change.