Heat Wave

Before I get to how hot it is in here (not like the Nelly song, but in our house, thanks to our new appliance), I state: Anyone who tells you that tattoos are not addictive is probably tattoo-free. While I am sure there are a few people out there who have been able to stop after one tattoo, I do not understand this. It's on the same par as someone telling me to only eat one M&M. Are you kidding me?

Thus, when the call of the tattoo is heard, I answer.

We'll get back to that calling in a bit. First, I must apologize to the wife AND then profess my love for....

....our new furnace.

The wife wanted to get a new furnace while all those rebates were available. I wanted nothing of the sort--I wanted to be sitting on a beach during a tropical getaway. Both cost the same. She was worried that our 16 year old furnace would die at any moment; most likely it would die on the coldest day of this winter and no one would be able to help us for a week and the rebates would have ended thirty-seven seconds right before the furnace died. I am of the school "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." That means I'd be the one who had to explain why we didn't get a new furnace while we had a chance at oodles of money in rebates and while we were still warm and happy.

Suffice it to say, I was VERY wrong about this whole furnace thing. (Sometimes it is awesome to be wrong. This is one of those times. I totally own my wrongness. I am all good with it.) It was installed last week and has been running ever since--really. It's one of those new-fangled ones that runs all the time, supposedly in an efficient, wonderful way. I am here to tell you: it IS in a wonderful way.

How do I know?

We live in a tri-level. Anyone who lives in a tri-level (or has visited someone who owns a tri-level in the middle of winter) knows that the lower level is always freezing cold in comparison to the other levels; in fact, we do not spend any time down stairs at all in the winter months EXCEPT on Christmas Day when we make my family sit down there (no offense to the family--it's just where the presents are). It's just too cold. The heat doesn't get there or stay there. If we want it warm down there, we have to crank the heat to miserable-hot for the rest of the house. When we've inquired from various professionals how to address this, we've heard all kinds of things, such as "get electric heating vents installed in this room so it's warmer--the furnace will never heat this lower level." Well, the wife has been studying and learned otherwise. She schooled me on the merits of the new furnaces and told me that the new furnaces would be able to heat the whole house evenly and comfortably.

I thought she had been listening to too many sales pitches.

People of the Addiverse, she was right. The new, efficient furnace (which sadly looks LITERALLY the same as our last furnace--for that much money I was hoping it would look at least a little bit different) is heating that lower level; in fact, it is so noticeable that I can barely stand it! Used to be as you walked down the steps, you could feel the temperature dropping. Seriously. I would guess--and, I am not exaggerating here--it was five-10 degrees cooler on that level....and, since we keep our house at 67 degrees, that's a chilly 58-60 degrees down there. Now, it's the same as the rest of the house. Both of us stare incredulously at each other, oooohing and ahhhhing at the amazing transformation from this little hunk of expensive love. It's something about how the air is always moving cuz the little furnace fan is on. When I asked the wife about that this morning, she said: "It's something about how the air is always circulating. I don't get it." She then walked away, toasty warm and smiling.

The furnace is so nice that I anticipate we will be turning down the thermostat, as for some reason 67 degrees at this point is too warm. I'm not sure if it's us hot-flashing, the new thermostat being wrong, a better system making the house warmer or what-not. It doesn't matter as long as we are warm and our gas bill doesn't quadruple.

Word to my family: you won't have to wear long underwear this year when you visit on Christmas Day!

As far as tattoos.....you know I've been wanting one.....aren't I always wanting one? If I weren't with the wife, I'd have a full sleeve of a tattoo on my arm. Yum. (See? Just another reason to love the wife. She has common sense and keeps me semi-grounded...semi being the operative word). I've been wanting to get a "word" tattoo in a simple font: meaning, I wanted to look like someone took a typewriter to my arm. I am all about typewriters. The manual kind, not the electric kind. Showing my age, to be sure. Anyways, being that I remain ever-so-respectful of the wife, I need to keep it simple and not turn it into a sleeve of ink. This means I had to keep it simple & relatively small. Of course, the bonus of such a tattoo is that it is cheap.

Well, cheap in comparison to the big cartoon mess on my back.

Have we ever talked about the tattoos on my back?? Here's a photo of one of the earlier additions to my back piece--my three nieces.

I walked around for a week thinking about the word I might want permanently plastered on my arm. It had to have personal meaning. Not trendy. Unusual, perhaps. A reminder. A message. I engaged the wife in the process (after all, she has to look at it, too), inquiring what word might fit the bill. The words "I love the furnace" didn't make too much sense, albeit true. Although we both loved the idea of the word "believe," but decided against it in the last minutes. I loved the idea of just putting the word "now." on my wrist--stay in there here and now, live in the now, there is only now, do it now, now is the time, now. Get ungrounded--focus back on the "now." I then thought of "SERENITY NOW!" because it makes me laugh, reminds me of a great Seinfeld episode and fits me well. I could have gotten, "THE WIFE," but she didn't seem amused.

In the end, I went with "namaste."

I am very surprised at how many people have not heard of this word or have any idea of what the word might mean. I don't know why I thought otherwise.....it's a very familiar term to me and the wife and we don't belong to a cult or anything (not that we know of). No offense to anyone for not knowing--after all, I didn't know you didn't know. Since getting tattooed, I've learned that namaste is a very difficult term to explain in one sentence. I suppose it'd be easiest to say, "it's a yoga term for when you end class," but that's not why I got it at all. I don't need a "good bye, yoga class" on my arm.

Namaste. True that it is a salutation, a greeting (both for howdy and see ya), originally Hindu in nature. Technically, I've heard it means "I bow to you," which is nice. It comes from the heart. It means, "I honor the place in you in which the entire Universe dwells, I honor the place in you which is of Love, of Integrity, of Wisdom and of Peace. When you are in that place in you, and I am in that place in me, we are One."

It is about respect, humility, equality, gratitude, honor, love, spirit, oneness. It's about seeing the good in others--when wanting to slap someone in the head, thinking "namaste" keeps me from doing it, as I focus on the good in that person.

Did you see the movie Avatar? It's like saying, "I see you." (If you didn't see the movie or didn't like the movie or didn't understand the movie, forget about that last comment. Just look at the Additar--along with the Additar-ed Xena--and laugh.) I see the good in you. I see the God in you. I respect you. I honor you. I am grateful to/for you. I am humbled in front of you. I see the Universe within both of us. I will not slap you in the head when I am pissed off at you. I SEE you.

It also means, "I will share the produce of our furnace with you."

Bet you didn't know that meaning. Trust me, that's the best one.
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