expense and trouble i didn't need

I came home from work yesterday to a condo at 56º, and I shortly developed the clear knowledge that I wasn't going to be able to get the furnace going. I found a plumber who looked at the furnace and said he could get it to start again for about $700 when he got the parts, or he could put in another for $2200. Now, we've already replaced the water heater, the stove, and the fridge, and the dishwasher is on its last legs... so as I type this, two not-unpleasantly-grubby young guys are walking back and forth to a truck in the driveway, swearing under their breath, and installing a new furnace.

I've learned a few things in the last day or so:

1. A notation in the yellow pages or on a website about "24-hour service" just means the phone might get picked up by a human (or it might not; you might have to wait for a human to check the messages and call you back).
   
2. When the phone clerk tells you, "They'll be out tonight," there's a chance they might be out tonight. There's also a chance you'll get a call in forty-five minutes advising you that no, they won't be out tonight.
   
3. It's marvelously helpful to have your wife tell you she thinks you're doing a good job, when you haven't got a clue what you're doing about this stuff.
   
4. It's incredibly reassuring when you wife tells you that there's money set aside for this sort of thing, and that if there's a discount for cash, she can probably manage that.
   
5. A ceramic heater can heat a fairly big bedroom, with a cathedral ceiling, from 55º to too-hot-to-sleep in about four hours. Holy bananas!
   
6. The day the heat is out is a good day to set the oven to do its self-cleaning-at-600º-for-four-hours thing.
   
7. There's Standard Time, Daylight Savings Time, Geologic Time, Quaker Time, Howdy Doody Time. Then there's contractor time, meaning when they show up. It's a mystery to which I've not found a solution.
   
8. Despite all your swearing about the inadequate insulation in the house, when you come home from work and the house is 56º, and when you wake up at 4:00 am and the house is 53º when it's been on the low twenties outside, the insulation in the house is pretty good. Even considering we ran the oven and three electric heaters for a while.
   
9. Exercising in a house at 53º is a mixed blessing. You do warm up, but you sweat, and the sweat is remarkably chilly when you stop. And let's not talk about getting out of a warm shower into a cold bathroom, shall we not?