Staying Warm In 2010

Eight hours after arriving, the heating company is finally pulling out of our driveway. They spent the day installing our new (and did I mention FREE!!! - I love my county!) 95% efficient furnace. "Buh bye," as Iain would say.

Today was a relatively warm Minnesotan day, hitting a high of 15 degrees (feels like 6). It was a good day to have no furnace for 8 hours, wouldn't you agree? So, one might ask, how do you stay warm for 8 hours with no heat when a temperature somewhere between 6 and 15 degrees is trying to creep its way into your home? Why, bake of course! Yes, turn on the trusty (electric) oven and bake your heart out. Apparently I have a small heart for baking, since I only baked one item, though admittedly, brownies almost made an appearance during the 7th hour since I was getting cold, again. Mark dissuaded me by explaining that I could simply turn on the oven and not actually bake anything. I still think anything - esp. no heat - is a good excuse for brownies, but perhaps another day. ...I should also give ample props to our electric fireplace which was our other main heat source for the day.

Back to the one item I did bake - I'm afraid I may have made a stomach or two grumble as I fried up bacon and onions for some DELICIOUS cheese, bacon, onion quick bread. Yes, bacon, cheese and bread. What more could you want? Mark was nearly speechless with delight and wanted to know how in the world I came up with such a brilliant idea - well, first I had the idea and then I looked it up in my cookbook and followed the recipe. Sneaky, I know. As for the poor grumbly stomachs [of the furnace guys], no, I didn't offer them any. Maybe I should've...and maybe I should've also offered some to the officers in the 2 police cars sitting in the church parking lot driveway directly opposite our house. A speed trap, no doubt. Mark suggested that perhaps they were staking out our house, but something tells me even with 3 heating company vans parked at our house, we're just not that interesting...perhaps its the "pumpkin people" next door (that a story for another day). The police left as soon as the children came out for recess, or as I put it: "Make the cops go away, send the children out to play." Thank you, please hold your applause until the end.

On a completely different note, you may have noticed that the title of this post is "Staying Warm In 2010." I'm guessing that if you're like me, when you read, you "hear" what you're reading - so, what did 2010 sound like as you read it?

Poll:

Is this year, 2010, pronouced:

A. Two-thousand-ten

or

B. Twenty-ten

Please let me know. My mother is adamant that it is B, and while I have to admit that twenty-ten is what my brain tells me when I read it, I still think that 9 years of saying Two-thosand -xx can't just instantly morph into Twenty-xx....can it?