Heat

We are making ever so slow progress on getting settled.  Over the weekend, we finally got the heat to start working.  You’d think that we could have waited a few months on that task; it’s summer, after all.

But you’d be wrong.  The last tenant moved out in March, so the place hadn’t been heated since then.  So it had a chill, even with nice weather upon our arrival (in the 60s F, that is).  But lately it’s been cool and rainy, with highs in the 50s.  So heat would be pretty nice.
It was quite a saga to get it fixed.  First, the heating guy says that there is not electricity to the thermostat, so he has no clue whether it’s working or not.  The electrician fixes the problem.  The subpar gardeners hired by the landlord (his preferred gardener was out of town) apparently clipped a few electrical wires.  That’s surprising given how little of the hedges they seemed to clip! 

Then we traded texts and voice mails with the landlord / owner (it’s a house) until he finally understands that we’re cold and without heat.

So the heating guy shows up at 8:15 on a Saturday morning (when the kids actually slept until 8!).  After about 3 minutes, he determines that the problem is an air lock.  He shows LBJ how to address future air locks, and we’re in business.  So we occasionally use the heat in the middle of June.

It’s quite a change from Kentucky, when we tried to avoid using the AC in May if possible.  We often succeeded by being out of town for the last two weeks.

So, we appear to have all the utilities, etc. working, a mere 4 weeks after arriving in the country.  If only our furniture would arrive…