It must be the right phase of the moon tonight, because my wireless keyboard is actually working as intended — which means the triumphant return of living room blogging!

I've felt a bit guilty about not blogging for those of you who actually read this occasionally. Moreover, I think it's bad for me personally to take such a long break from writing. My brain needs to write, and my life seems like it needs more pauses for writing and reading lately.

That's probably the main reason why I'm tired this weekend, although last night at Markie's annual Fall Festivus party I said that it's because I'm coming into work a half hour earlier this month or because I didn't have any heat in the house Friday night. Both of which are true, obviously. I don't know why anyone would lie about facts of this size.

Getting the furnace checked out for winter was a bit of an adventure. I called the guys Xcel uses over to do some preventative maintenance — it doesn't look like a professional has looked at the thing since 2003 — but after taking some readings the furnace man said he couldn't do anything for me and that I should get a new one.

Perhaps understandably, the home warranty people did not buy that line when I contacted them, and they sent out their own subcontractor to inspect the furnace all official-like. To my uninformed eye he seemed to do a much more thorough inspection than the first guy did.

Sometimes I'm perversely proud of this house, like when the electrician saw the ad hoc basement wiring they'd called out on the Truth in Housing, or whenever I show new visitors the hilarious upstairs staircase. I have to admit, when flames shot out a foot from the furnace panel during this guy's inspection... that was one of those times.

There was no CO2 in the air, but the CO2 readings from inside the furnace were really really high, and so the second guy shut it down for liability reasons. I spent Friday night buried in a mound of blankets, but the house only got down to the mid-50's so it wasn't bad.

I'll be far more miserable on the hunting stand in a few weeks, I promise.

Lucky for me that same company was able to send some people out to clean the furnace on Saturday, on my dime still, and I'm told everything is fine now. I'm not sure if I'd rather have the furnace break sometime this winter while it has a clean bill of health and is still covered by my home warranty, or have it shamble on for a few more years so I can save up to replace it with a super-efficient model without putting all my plants in danger.

It's nice to think that I might be able to go at least a year now without having to leave work to let some stranger into my house. Once I actually get the curtains done (I know! I'm getting closer!) I might even go a month without spending over $100 on home improvement.

Yesterday night I was talking to one of Markie and her-Matt's hippie friends — hippie being just about my favorite dysphemism in the world these days — about his buying a house, and I still think it's worth it, despite everything.

(I also really do recommend the 203(k) loan, no matter who you're going through to get it. Kick some ass with that repair money.)

Maybe this is me and my paranoia or maybe it's something very primal, but at night in my various apartments I used to feel like I was surrounded by darkness, and these days I feel like my boundaries are the walls of my house. I'm in my little fortress on the hill, and any trouble that wants to find me has got to come up all of those surprisingly uneven stairs.

Which reminds me. A few days go I watched Tooth and Nail, a post-apocalyptic defend-yourself-against-the-cannibals movie notable mainly for #1. The humanity-runs-of-gas-early apocalypse, still a fresh one as apocalypses go and #2. The casting of Rider Strong (Shawn Hunter from Boy Meets World) as one of the survivors. It was terrible, but that's the sort of nonsense I get up to on my instant queue.

More importantly, I finally watched Little Miss Sunshine this Friday, after having had the disc out for two weeks. (You're welcome Netflix!)

I had such a grudge against that movie, and it didn't help its case by showing me a preview for Sideways and some other movie I hated but can't remember beforehand.

But it won me over. It's amazing now to think of how much I liked American Beauty at the time, when I've seen probably a dozen better movies since then that have the same essential message.

I suppose I should go to bed though; I barely woke up at all today and I'd like to have better odds tomorrow.