Because we are spend­ing around $500 every 6 weeks for propane, I decided to call and ask the com­pany if the amount we were going thru was “nor­mal”. Now…I know we have an old farm­house, but it has also been rein­su­lated. I keep the ther­mo­stat at 60 dur­ing the day, 62–64 in evening and 58 at night. Until 2 weeks ago, every north fac­ing win­dow, door and open­ing was cov­ered with a heavy blan­ket. I also know this has been an “unusu­ally” cold win­ter, what­ever that means, and we do have any­where from 36–41 inches of snow on the ground if it were flat, which it isn’t, so we have 4–8 foot drifts here and there, includ­ing around our house. To me, hav­ing snow­banks around my house would act as insu­la­tion, right? In kind of an inglooy kind of way? (hey,my blog…can make up any word I want!) So you’d think that would help in keep­ing the cold out. So…the guy comes out and has to traipse through crotch high snow to even get to the tank, get all the snow off and start to make an eval­u­a­tion. He has me turn off the fur­nace and any other gas appli­ances and tells me he will check the reg­u­la­tors and fit­tings out­side and work his way indoors. So here’s my think­ing. Do I get the hell out of dodge? Give him the keys and drive a cou­ple miles away, just in case??? I don’t, but believe me, I was watch­ing his every move. And I didn’t turn on a light, use my cell phone and even took the land line off the hook. Not that I was wor­ried or any­thing. He is out there stand­ing next to the tank talk­ing on his cell phone and I’m in here think­ing “should he be doing that????” You know, the old “don’t talk on the phone and put gas in your car at the same time” men­tal­ity? I guess it’s fine as he then comes to the house and tells me our reg­u­la­tor was installed in 1964!! Are you kid­ding me? Don’t you guys ever check these things? Well it being a nice day, and him know­ing they were going to change out all the reg­u­la­tors come spring any­way, he decides to change it and sev­eral fit­tings that appar­ently went nowhere. I know, I know.…they fill my tank every 6 weeks and no one has done any­thing about this since 1964??? Holy crap. All must have gone well as he then comes in to tell me to turn on the fur­nace. Are you kid­ding me???  Are you sure??? Me turn on the fur­nace? YOU turn on the furnace…your the gas guy! The whole time he is tak­ing off his boots so he can go to our base­ment and see if there are any leaks, and turn on my water heater and blah blah blah blah…all I can think  of is STOP TALKING…I mean this guy is a reg­u­lar chatty kathy, telling me all about his neigh­bors and the dog and the cats and his new glasses as he is trekking down to make sure we don’t blow up. I tried to just nod and look inter­ested all the time hop­ing he is con­cen­trat­ing on what he is doing and my talk­ing or ask­ing ques­tions is not dis­tract­ing him from the task at hand. And he con­tin­ues to chat while he turns on the furnace…“Oh there it goes…that’s a good thing.…ha ha ha ha…” he says as I mean­while start back­ing out of the room. Then damn, wouldn’t you know it he has a ques­tion about the water heater.…and more chat­ter. Now really. Most times I am as inter­ested in chat­ter as the next, but I also firmly believe that there are times and sit­u­a­tions that, I think, demand your full attention.…checking my home for gas leaks prob­a­bly rat­ing among the top!! But I guess for these guys/gals turn­ing gas on and off, try­ing to fig­ure out where, if any leaks are present, is there day.  Luck­ily, accord­ing to him, he can find no leaks. Even luck­ier, for us, spring is com­ing and using propane to the tune of 7 or more gal­lons a day will ease and we won’t have to think about it til next win­ter. Now I can only hope his chat­ter was not at all dis­tract­ing to him and mainly for the pur­pose of dis­tract­ing me!!