Sleep is for the weak
Dave and I had the most ridiculous night last night. We've been running on low energy for a few days so we decided to be responsible and go to bed early. Around midnight I woke up, but couldn't figure out why. After laying awake for a few minutes, it occurred to me that it was a little warm. We have the thermostat set low for the night, but once in a while, a certain person whom we'll call "Dave" (because that's his name) turns it up to 67 or 68 and then I spend the night tossing off covers in January because it gets so stinkin' hot in our room. So last night I clambered out of bed and worked my way over to the thermostat to see what was going on. It said the temperature in the house was 68, but it was set to turn off at 64. I puzzled over that for a while, then went back to bed and waited for our furnace to shut off. It didn't. So I got up again and wandered back over to the thermostat to try and shake off my general confusion. A few minutes later I decided we had a problem. I got back in bed and waited a few minutes then asked Dave if he was awake. He was. I told him what was going on and for a few minutes he just lay there. I think he was attempting to lay real still to see if I would go away. Eventually, we both got up and puzzled over the thermostat. We spent the next hour or so looking at the wires in our furnace (Dave), looking at the wires on our thermostat (Dave), seaching through online forums to see if anyone else has had this problem (me), and looking for .pdf's of the relevant manuals (me). We replaced batteries, discussed the merits of white and red wires, and generally just sat around confused while turning stuff off and back on again. Just after 1AM, we fixed the problem, which leads directly to a new problem: we don't know how we did it. I suppose we have a couple of theories, but nothing concrete enough to where if it happens again we won't look like we floundering and making stuff up as we go through the same motions we did last night. We're a little grumpy because the whole heating system isn't even two years old yet. Also, the whole experience begs the question: what if this happens when we're traveling? It would be a bit expensive to have a furnace heating the house non-stop for who-knows-how-long. We don't really trust it anymore. By the time we went to bed, the house was 75 degrees, and that was despite us having turned the system off for most of the hour we were trouble-shooting.
Around 1:15 I tossed down a couple of Tylenol, went to bed, and hoped for the best. I fell asleep after tossing and turning for a while. Dave, on the other hand, was completely jazzed and didn't get to sleep until 4:30. So much for being responsible and going to bed early. Clearly it doesn't pay. Here's to a surreal day informed by sleep-deprivation. Hollah!