I knew some­thing was amiss when I awoke to find that the breeze from my slightly open win­dow was uncom­fort­ably cold. The heat stopped work­ing overnight. Hav­ing made a spe­cial effort to be up early to run errands, I was furi­ous to dis­cover that the hot water was also out. There are two things in this world which, if missed, will make me instantly irri­ta­ble: meals and show­ers. I ate breakfast.

I started call­ing the land­lord. The boiler in my build­ing dates back to approx­i­mately the time of James Watt, so one or two major mechan­i­cal fail­ures per year is cus­tom­ary. The sys­tem closely resem­bles Frankenstein’s lab­o­ra­tory. Wires, bare and cloth-insulated, twist and turn like vines along walls. The win­dows of gauges and sight glasses are mot­tled by the accu­mu­lated crust of decades. Obso­lete parts are bypassed but left in place. Unable to trou­bleshoot it myself, I call hourly for sta­tus updates. I found it curi­ous that it was tak­ing hours to dis­patch a repair­man. What could pos­si­bly be wrong this time?

The answer became clear after lunch when the “repair­man” finally showed up, not with a tool­box but with a tanker truck. Who lets their tank of heat­ing oil run dry!?!