Carbon Monoxide!?

Image
Weird. The smoke alarm went off, not incredibly odd when I am using the fireplace, but it wasn't the smoke detector. It was the CO alarm. I was totally surprised. It had never gone off as long as I have had one, over many many years. Yep, after resetting it a few times. It was getting a reading over 200 ppm CO. When I took it downstairs I got a reading near 300 ppm. I started getting light headed at this point. After thinking maybe the furnace heat exchanger failed and puzzling around a bit I figured out what happened. As part of the huge winter storm that recently covered almost half of the US, we lost our electricity. So, being well prepared, I rolled out the generator and started doing what I normally do. The generator (although it was completely outside) was creating CO to get in the house. Using the fireplace draft (and possibly other leaks) the whole house created a vacuum around the seal of the basement garage door. After the CO got into the house the forced air heat...

Here is a poem, sent to me, worthy of repeating.

"Designed to Fly"

by Ellen Waterston


After ten hours of trying

the instructor undid

my fingers, peeled

them one by one

off the joystick.

"You don't need

to hold the plane

in the air," he advised.

"It's designed to fly.

vA hint of aileron,

a touch of rudder,

is all that is required."


I looked at him

like I'd seen God.

Those props and struts

he mentioned, they too,

I realized, all contrived.

I grew dizzy

from the elevation

from looking so far

down at the surmise:

the airspeed of faith

underlies everything.

Lives are designed

to fly.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Carbon Monoxide!?