***Attention: the following is a true story... I promise!***

Okay, this is just freaky...

You may or may not know that the cable company sends around "sniffer" trucks to detect "leaks" in the cable system, places where cable signal leaks out of a connection somehow. Well, around Christmas, one of these trucks was in our neighborhood and got a signal from our house. As it happened, my dad was home a bit later than usual (important event number 1) and was there to talk to the guy. However, he (the cable guy) didn't have with him the special tool to pin down the exact location of the leak (important event number 2). Ordinarily, Dad would have had to schedule an appointment for a couple of weeks later, in order to be off from work. But since all this was happening around Christmas and the end of the year he was already off for the rest of that week and could have the guy come back in just a day or two (important event number 3). As it turned out though, the cable company ended up sending out someone else. He, too, forgot that particular piece of equipment (important event number 4) and therefore had to search for the leak by hand, going though the house from top to bottom. Dad joined him, and they went up into the attic to check the cable connections there. While up there, they did find the leak, but then as they were about to come back down, the cable guy suddenly yelled, "OH SHIT!" When Dad asked what was wrong, he replied, "There was a HUGE blue flame spurting up out of your heating unit!" YIKES!

Again, it was very fortunate that Dad was off for several days on end, so we were able to have a heating repair guy come out at pretty much any time that one was available. As it turned out though, one wasn't available for about a week or so, and we couldn't use the heater, or the A/C, for that time. In the middle of winter, major problem, right? Not this time. Though we had just come through a huge ice storm about 2 weeks before, now began a looong stretch of unseasonably warm weather! Somebody is definately lookin' out for us!

When the heater guy finally made it out, he went up in the attic and called down for us to turn the heater on. Immediately he yelled, "WHOA! TURN IT OFF! TURN IT OFF!" I guess he hadn't believed us when we'd told him we had a blue flame shooting out of our heater. After examining the serious scorch marks on the heating unit itself, as well as its perilously close proximity to a 2x4, he told us that the only other times he's ever seen damage that severe was in homes that had just burned to the ground! That's pretty amazing in itself, but when you consider how many things had to happen just so in order for us to discover this before the house burned down... If dad hadn't been running late when the "sniffer" truck came by, if the guy hadn't had to reschedule for a by-hand search, if Dad hadn't had all those days off coming up, if the guy who came by hadn't forgotten his specialized equipment so that he had to go up there himself... or if the heater hadn't happened to come on while he was up there, if he hadn't been looking that direction when it did... Change any one of those things, and I could have been homeless right now! Praise God! And breathe a big sigh of relief!

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