Carbon Monoxide!?

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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...

The PBS NOVA program tonight was about Antarctica. It was strange watching it. All the shots brought back feelings, everything from the thin blue glove liners and "Big Red" (the parkas). The very familiar helicopters 08H and 36J were stories in themselves to me. I saw several of my friends and it seems like I had met just about everyone who was interviewed. A fair amount of the shooting was done when I was there it appeared. It was interesting to get whisked about by camera edits rather than geography, a shot of Mt Erebus and then in the same sequence you are at WAIS Divide or some place out in the Taylor Valley. For the viewer it was all one place, Antarctica.

It was nice and made me homesick in a way.

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