Have y’all made any plans to hook up yet?

?! Must google — ‘scuse me . . .

Okay, I did my homework, and I see a lot of information about y’all getting your gas from registered Corgis — that doesn’t sound very efficient! (Also a strongly worded warning against cowboys — anti-American gasbags!)

Meanwhile, in the Slide’s world, the resulting celebration might be mistaken by the unfamiliar for some sort of bizarre pagan ritual. Heheheheheheheheheheheh…

Wait… did I say that out loud? *shifty pyromaniac eyes*

Over here, the whole business of fires and stoves has become rather fraught. The ‘health and safety’ Nazis have moved in like so many hungry wolves and the installation of woodburners and the like is rapidly acquiring the same sort of costly mystique that surrounds gas appliances.

Naturally, this means more expense and it is becoming impossible to know how much that they claim is ‘necessary’ is actually just nonsense spun to generate money.

For example, the ‘wisdom’ here is that you almost always need a lined chimney when using a stove – and that lining is made out of re-cast powdered unicorn horn, cunningly fashioned to resemble stainless steel. The reasoning seems to be that, to function efficiently, a stove needs a hot chimney. It also needs not to be depositing tar on the surface of an old brick one.

My suspicious badgery mind keeps wondering, in that case, how Badger House’s poor old chimney has managed to survive, these past four hundred years or so, with God alone knows what having been burned down the ages to keep the occupants alive.

It also makes me wonder how that old sage Ben Franklin managed. He, by all accounts, invented woodburning stoves and I don’t seem to recall they had stainless steel chimney liners back then.

Anyway, a fire such as Rodent advocates would be regarded as akin to a Small Nuclear Incident here and one installer solemnly informed me that in the event of a chimney fire, the unicorn horn liner must be replaced. ‘At how many hundred of pounds?!’ I blinked at him.

So, anyway and whatever… Badger House might be getting a new stove this summer. And a new chimney lining.

I am currently perfecting my best, ‘this is a stick-up! Hand over the money or the kid gets it!’ voice.

I’m too old to tinkle.

The rumbling is bad enough, but if you have a ceramic liner, that high frequency “ping” is the sound of doom!

Creosote is evil. Happily, our present chimney has a cleanout door near the base for bottom-up brush access — Mr. Hill is getting a little old for the Chim Chim Cheree routine!

Although the funniest stink story I have wasn’t the fault of the dog. It was the dog’s reaction – to immediately lay his head on the floor and put one paw over his nose. My siblings and I were rolling laughing, my dad was bellowing likewise, and my mom came running in from the back of the house to find out what the ruckus was about.

And no, I’m not going to point out who was to blame.

See above