Correspondence: Ups & downs, Ins & outs

“Mother Nature,” a 
painting by Britnie Walston

Edited by Moristotle

[Items of correspondence are not attributed; they remain anonymous. They have been chosen for their inherent interest as journalism, story, or provocative opinion, which may or may not be shared by the editor or other members of the staff of Moristotle & Co.]

I got up this morning and went to turn the heat up and my thermostat was blank. Checked the fuse and it was good, so we’ll need a new thermostat. The upside is, this happened today, when the temperature will hit the 70s today, and not tomorrow, when it will be in the 20s.
    We have never had gas heat, have always had all-electric houses. I have changed out a lot of electric thermostats but never a gas one. So I called my friend Charlie down the street, who is a heating and air guy, and he says he’ll stop by this afternoon and have a brandy with me and fix it. He asks whether the thermostat has batteries. I have never heard of such a thing and say no.

How’s the cat
going to deal
with this?

    I’m not sure how the cat is going to deal with this. If you hear of our deaths, tell the police to look hard at the animal licking herself on the back of the couch.
    Well, anyway, when Charlie came around 3 p.m. to check the thermostat, it may have been warm outside, but it was chilly inside the house. He walked in with a new thermostat, popped the cover off the old one, and slapped it against the palm of his hand, which forced two AAA batteries to fall out. Gas thermostats have batteries?!
    I got out two new ones for Charlie to pop in, he placed the cover back on, and we went outside and sat in the sun and had a brandy. Yes, I felt foolish but it was a cheap foolish.

Personally, I’m going for a scotch, since that almost always helps me think more clearly.
    Except for that one time, when we were drinking scotch in Key West, and a very drunk friend said, “You know what? I bet we could find someone to take us to Cuba, if we walked down to the docks and asked around,” and I was just drunk enough to say, “Well hell yeah, let’s go!”
    I guess that’s why most people drink rum in that part of the world.

If you are
reading this,
I am dead

During the night, I was musing about the wording of a statement along the lines of “If you are reading this, I am dead.” All I would have to do is instruct someone in authority to post it as soon as they have been notified of my passing. I know, weird thought. But then, again, it might be fun to think of what I might say. And what might anyone say? What might you say?

DIY homeowner
tip for the day

If you want a tip about electric heat, I have one word for you: Infrared. We have gas, but my wife is paranoid about it (two of her coworkers were almost blown up in that Boston natural gas disaster a few years back), and our furnace is @ 30 years old, so I started experimenting with infrared plug-in heaters. Nothing fancy, just the kind you can safely use from any 15-amp outlet. After three years of experimentation, the best deal I’ve found is Pelonis, @ 50 bucks each at Walmart. They have 500-1000-1500 watt settings, and a thermostat. They’re passive, no fan, and being in front of one is like sitting in warm sunshine. I despise heat pumps, because I never feel warm unless a room is in the mid 70s, but with these, 68 feels great.
    If you use the 1500-watt setting for any period of time, the heater should be on a 20-amp circuit, but we keep them on 1000, so no worries on a 15-amp circuit. We safely heat the whole house with them, for less than we used to pay for natural gas.
    That’s your DIY homeowner tip of the day....

Is great suffering
necessarily unjust?

Mother Nature may dole out suffering as part of the natural equation, but is it injustice, or is it just what it is? As in, the way the natural system works. There are predators, there are prey animals; the predators have to work harder to survive, and it is anything but an easy job. The prey animals, on the other hand, have it relatively easy – until a predator attacks. Taking it into the human realm, there is great suffering when a psychopath targets and kills a victim in some horrible fashion, but is it injustice, or was the victim so unaware of their surroundings that they brought their fate on themselves? And if, for argument’s sake, we say it is because of some sort of horrible injustice, why do they make so many movies about such and why do people enjoy them so much?

It amazes me

It amazes me the way the weather people here in the Midwest tell us, when the temp drops tonight to 20, the snow will melt tomorrow and freeze to ice. I guess they all think everyone just moved here from Argentina. Both sides of a friend’s family are from Upstate NY. He tells me that when the forecasters where he now lives get worked up about possibly 2" of snow, he says, “OMG! It’s a blizzard and we’re all going to die!” I don’t see how the locals here would survive 48" of NY snow, much less having to shovel their way through it.

She takes off
her swimsuit top
and holds it
out the window

I’m driving a Porsche 911 Targa straight through from Washington DC to Key West, which, thanks to the wind noise and turbulence, is about like flying 1200 miles non-stop in a WWI biplane, and I’m on what is now called the Overseas Highway, somewhere between Islamorada and Big Pine Key, and a Corvette pulls up beside me. Which is saying something, because back then it’s only a two-lane road, and I’ve been making my fair share of illegal passes, and I’m running about 80mph, so pulling up beside me is somewhat of a feat.
    I’m exhausted, after nearly 13 hours on the road, and I’m irritated, and I’m thinking, Who is this asshole trying to block me in behind slow traffic? So I glance over, and one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen mouths the words “follow me” as she takes off her swimsuit top and holds it out the window, and then her driver hits the gas.
    So of course I follow, which is not easy to do since the ’Vette is taking it up to 100 mph at every opportunity, but you do what you feel you have to do, exhausted or not.
    Finally I pull into what I guess is their driveway on Big Pine Key, stop, and get out of my Porsche and start to walk towards the Corvette. Its doors open and out from the driver’s side steps a big, tough-looking guy.
    Just as I’m thinking, Oh hell, and starting to retreat to my car, the woman comes running towards me and says, in very imperfect English, something like, “I can’t believe you were able to keep up with my brother. He drives like a crazy person.” 

    And as I’m processing “brother,” he comes up and says, in quite good English, “My sister is the crazy person. She saw you in your car, said, ‘There’s a guy with a big beard and bushy hair [yes, an Afro hairstyle; I had one back then] driving the Porsche. I want to meet him.’ And, like magic, here we are!”
    Turned out he was originally from Cuba, she was visiting (illegally of course) from Cuba, and I was headed, in a roundabout way, to Cuba. So we had much to talk about before I headed on to Cuba myself.

    I was planning to squeeze in a quick trip to the Caribbean before heading to Lake Placid to freeze my butt off at the 1980 Winter Olympics.

It is
enough, no?

    Back then, it was relatively easy to get tickets to US hockey games, because no one wanted to watch our team get stomped by some tiny Euro borough like Luxembourg, or whomever. But fate intervened in Cuba and I wound up spending several days with a charming woman who could carry a week’s worth of clothing in a bag slung casually over her shoulder. “I have five swimsuits, two pairs of sandals, and one of my brother’s button-up dress shirts,” she said. “It is enough, no?”
    And that is how friends of mine wound up with my tickets to the Lake Placid Winter Olympics and why they’ve been able to spend their lives bragging, “We were there in person for ‘The Miracle On Ice’ hockey game,” and why I can only say, “I could have been there, if I hadn’t….”

Grateful for correspondence, Moristotle