Are You Hissing At Me?

There’s nothing cozier in winter than a nice roaring fire. That is, unless we’re talking about a warm, sandy beach somewhere…and an ice-cold gin and tonic with a slice of key lime decoratively perched on the rim of the glass….then you can keep your lukewarm, hard-to-keep-lit, hissing fire….I’m off for greener (albeit, sandier) pastures…

There’s something mesmerizing about a fire….have you noticed this?


Of course, there’s also something mesmerizing about the rolling waves of the ocean…that hypnotic, rhythmic roar of the waves washing on the shore…sometimes, I can almost picture myself out there:

And I can hear myself thinking “Not to worry….I have everything perfectly under control.”

The waves of the ocean, however, do not require any maintenance to keep them going. A fire on the other hand, requires pretty constant TLC. You poke, you prod, you push and jockey those logs for the optimal position for “maximum flame output”…and if you’re really lucky, you’ll be able to raise the temperature in your room without having to touch the dreaded thermostat.

A thermostat which has been designed for maximum inaccuracy, in my humble opinion. Who was the genius who decided on creating a little plastic stub on an angle, so that the most one can hope for in setting the temperature is an approximation of the desired temperature?? Is this some kind of conspiracy, began by the executives at the Honeywell thermostat factory? Possibly their thought was “Hey…it’ll be winter. They’ll be so freakin’ cold, they’ll be thrilled to just get it in the ballpark of warm. It doesn’t have to be exact. ‘Warm’ is a relative term, anyway….”

All I know is when someone asks me what the temperature is in the house, I sound like an idiot, because I haven’t a clue…and maybe that was Honeywell’s singular intent all along. Maybe they get their jollies off of making people like me look incredibly stupid. Not that it’s much of a stretch….

So I poke, roll, stoke and otherwise nurture the fire to throw off enough heat so that I don’t have to deal with the crooked, impossible-to-understand, can’t-read-it-to-save-my-life thermostat.

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Honeywell.