“be grateful for what you have” is a lesson we’re going to face over night. At some point [Wednesday] our clanker of a furnace went kerplunk. I noticed at around 8pm the house was getting kind of chilly. I went to turn the thermostat up a little & nothing happened. We checked it out to find there’s gas going through the furnace & fan belt is not broken, but there’s no heat coming into the apartment. It’s obvious the blower was gone. I knew then we had one of two options:

pay top dollar [which we don’t have] trying to find a hotel room on Valentine’s Day or stick it out here where we have a lot of blankets.

A lot of balnkets it is. I think my “It’s Buffalo, deal with it” category is coming back to haunt me. We’re going to “deal with it” tonight. A furnace fixer is coming in the morning. What do we do in the mean time? We [the family] are grateful for what we do have because there are so many who are without in this world … all winter long. When you wake up from a warm bed in the morning & read this, please say a prayer for those who don’t have a place called “home”. If you’re not the praying kind, wish & hope that those less fortunate are in a safe place through these negative wind chills.

I’m stuck on the Buffalo snow theme & dealing with it. I searched the internet to find this:

The city was pounded by a blizzard, second only to that of 1977, in late January, 1985. As Griffin continued fighting with the Common Council over making Joe Scinta Commissioner of Street Sanitation, he was left running the snow fighting effort. The city was shut down, there was a driving ban, and over three feet of snow fell in three days. Governor Cuomo declared a state of emergency for the Western New York area.

When asked by a reporter what the citizens should do, Griffin gave one of his most famous quotes: “Stay home. Enjoy your family. Watch Channel 7, and get a six-pack.”

After 1977, the Blizzard of 1985 is one we don’t hear about much any more. This morning it was 12º [-5 wind chill] & there was a three foot drift of snow at our porch steps. We had to dig around the car, then yoshi, jazz & I had push it out of the driveway while my man kept gunning the gas. What a bite in the ass that was! I am glad the plow didn’t come by because we would have never gotten the car out. Wearing two pair of gloves, after 15 minutes of doing all of that I could hardly move my fingers. It’s not the snow. It’s the below zero wind chills we have to deal with living so close to a lake.

We should know by now Buffalo schools were closed today. We got a phone call [voice recording] from Superintendent Williams’ office. As a make up day a full day of school is scheduled for Friday, Feb. 16th. I had one grumbling already this afternoon & I told him “It’s Buffalo, deal with it.”