THANKFUL FOR MY HANDYMAN

I kept waking up this morning and I thought it was still early because my arm was cold when it was out from under the covers. We turn the heat down at night, but then before time to get up our nice thermostat tells the furnace to come on so we can rise to a nice warm house. Well, that didn't happen today!! It was pretty chilly out from under those covers --- 60 degrees in the hall. I passed on my morning shower ---the warm water would have been fine, but then getting out while wet would not have been so nice!! Handyman came out and lit the fireplace so we weren't completely without heat and I went upstairs to the bonus room and turned on the heat pump that we have mainly for cooling the room. After breakfast in the dining room (which is close to the fireplace) handyman put on warm clothes and crawled under the house to check on the furnace.
It turned out to be the fan (again) that blows the exhaust from the furnace to the outside. We've had some trouble with this before, but handyman had cleaned and oiled it and kept it working. After he figured out the problem he went to a shop here in town to purchase one, but they didn't have the correct part. They told him where he might find it on Monday. Well, it's gonna be cold this weekend, so he went back under the house and worked on the fan some more and got it working. Ahhh-it's so nice to hear the furnace running again. But now he's looking for the replacement online. We're going to go ahead and replace the part since that's the third time he's had to help it along. I don't think we want to keep having the same problem over and over again. But, we're thankful that we had the gas logs and heat pump to keep us warm while the problem was being corrected and even more thankful to have a live-in handyman who can fix just about anything!!

GOOD DEALS

A few months back, handyman and I received a gift card from Discovercard. It was for $10.00 off any purchase at Red Lobster, as long as we charged it on our Discovercard. Not a bad deal at all since we don't carry over balances from one period to another so we never pay them any interest.
We don't normally go out to eat on Friday night because the restaurants in our town are filled to overflowing most weekend nights. But on Friday, the schools had been out due to snow and they were predicting more snow that night so we took the chance that maybe more people would stay home. It turned out to be a good time to go out. When we got to the restaurant there wasn't even a line.
I'm not a huge lover of fish, so I stick to the "fried" menu!! I ordered the popcorn shrimp with baked potato with butter and sour cream and a salad. Handyman ordered Walt's shrimp, which is the larger variety of shrimp, along with the baked potato and a salad. When they brought out the salads we noticed that they were a little skimpy compared with most salads around town, but that was okay since we didn't fill up quite so much on them. It left more room for our entrees. The shrimp was delicious! I ended up not being able to finish all of mine. There's not much you can do to ruin a baked potato so they were delicious too. And the cheddar biscuits are always superb!!

So, thank you Discovercard for giving us $10.00 towards our meal. It was great!!

CHRISTMAS AT THE CABIN

No, we didn't spend Christmas at the cabin. We didn't even do a drive-by. Fortunately one of our neighbors was there and took these fantastic pictures and emailed them to us!
If I had been there, I really would have been regretting the fact that we didn't put a fireplace in it. It would have been sooooo cozy!!

I love this picture because it really shows up where the lake is in the summer. Right now the lake is down and we only have a creek, but the snow stuck to the bare ground.

Here is another view that shows the boat. Handyman is planning on bringing it home pretty soon so he can do some work on it and have it ready to go this spring.