Wood Stoves and Voting

The smell of fall is in the air. No wait... That's just in my living room.

I don't know why, but yesterday when I came home I had this wild desire to see if I could make the wood stove in the living room work. It really wasn't cold out, but yet when I went into the house there was a certain chill. I guess it was either try the wood stove out or turn on the baseboard heat.

I really only have one problem with baseboard heat, and that is the fact that it always takes a certain amount of time to heat the room up. This is of course compared to a central forced air furnace, which blows air almost instantly. I do think baseboard heaters have gotten a bad rap though. Everyone associates them with a wildly spinning power meter. Well it is true--They do use a lot of electricity, but one advantage with them is the fact that you can only turn on the heat in certain rooms if you want. That can be a good thing. My baseboard heating works just fine to me.

Anyway, after I got home and decided to fire up the wood stove, I went and got a beer and started perusing the web for tips, tricks, and general information about lighting and operating a wood stove. I didn't find much, and it was all pretty basic stuff. I know how to start a fire in general--Newspaper, kindling, and fuel wood, but I really wanted info on controlling stove dampers. Oh well... Fuck it, I'll try it anyway.

I went to the garage and grabbed my hatchet and cut up a bunch of nice, small kindling and did my fire starting stack in the stove and lit it. It took off just fine, and after it got going I shut the door. The flame went down a little bit and smoke started swirling around inside the stove. Hmm. "Oh yeah... There's another damper down here under the firebox." I pulled out the air intake damper and the flame once again shot up and all the smoke disappeared up the chimney. I watched it for a little while and was feeling pretty good about things. I played with the intake damper and was able to get the flames to slow down just a little bit so the wood didn't look like a blazing campfire. I was feeling pretty good. Did it all by myself!

I went upstairs to read the news online and ended up chatting with Rhon for a little while, who (thankfully) reminded me that it was voting day. After I ate my dinner a few minutes later, I zoomed out to my voting place and did my thing. They had a new machine over in the corner that was all electronic, and they asked me if I wanted to try that instead of the usual "color the circles" method. "Sure," I said, "I always like to try new stuff." I have to admit, a touch screen voting method was very cool. It worked superb. I have to wonder though--What's the point of their being only one machine? I also noted that before I did go over there the check-in lady had to fill out one extra little form first. Well, if they have to fill out more paperwork before you do electronic voting, what's the point? And why only one machine? Too expensive? Maybe next time we vote we'll be voting on a levy to pay for more voting machines...

When I went back home, my living room was nice and comfy, and the fire was burning low. I put in another piece of wood and decided to watch a movie. It was actually warm enough in there at that point that I was able to be comfortably nude. As a matter of fact, after the movie started I even went over and turned the flame down even more. It looked like this could work!

This morning when I woke up, I detected a little smoky smell in the air, but not too bad. When I walked downstairs though, it was a lot of smoky smell. Obviously, I need to do something a little different. I'm going to end up smelling myself and everything in the house like a forest fire. I probably should start closing my closet doors too, just in case. No sense in everything I own smelling smoky.

I guess I just voluntarily knocked my wood stove cockiness down a couple notches. I'm still not quite ready I guess, but it's a start.