Time for a public service announcement

This piece of helpful advice is for some of you landowners out there.

IF you own land in an area where oil & gas wells are being drilled...

and IF you and your neighbors still have the mineral rights for your land...

and IF you are feeling like you are missing out on some money because the producer has not drilled any wells on your land, just your neighbors...

It probably will not help convince them to do otherwise if you blockade a public road and try to extort money from a service company in exchange for allowing them past.

Shooting at them won't help either.

Just a tip.

And now begins the drinking

My parents arrived on Sunday, and my sister arrived yesterday. Somewhat unsurprisingly, yesterday was also the coldest day in Arkansas since I moved down here. Coincidence? I think not.

I'm a little stressed about having to actually be the host for the holidays for once, despite the fact that it's a small group (unlike a couple of my friends, who felt the need to host something like 19 people for Christmas day, the masochists) and I'm bound to get a lot of help. Fortunately there is eggnog and rum.

Anyhow, I hope everybody has a Merry/Happy Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Dies Natalis Solis Invicti/Holidays/etc.

Just like old times

It's been below freezing all day and raining for the latter part of it. This is the first time since I moved here that I've actually had to scrape my windshield. I can't believe how right that feels.

I'm actually hoping for a really good ice storm tonight - I've never been in one before.

Heat's on.

Furnace is fixed. Apparently it was just a loose connection, and the filter wasn't forgotten, it was left out deliberately because there's another one farther up the line (that I also forgot to ever change) and having two filters would restrict the air flow too much. Mea culpa. I'm glad I limited my righteous indignation to here rather than spewing it all in the furnace guy's face.

My rage keeps me warm at night.

Another exercise in the mundane and extremely irritating.

I got home last night and it was - unsurprisingly - a little cold in the house. Thus did I go to turn on the furnace.

"Hmph" says I. "The furnace is already on, but there's no air coming out of the vents. Wonderful." I started to check the system out right at the beginning. The blower outside was working, so the problem was somewhere in the furnace. I checked the furnace. It was warm, so the heater still worked. It wasn't too difficult to find the culprit though. I went to check to see if the filter was clogged only to find that there was no filter, so most likely anything that the filter would have caught is now plugged in the ducting somewhere down the line. Wonderful. Thank you furnace man for forgetting to install such a simple and critical piece of equipment.

I swear if you could channel my rage directly into a generator you'd solve the world's energy problems.