The New Heater, Part III

The new heater is looking great, isn't it?

Decorative Heater

Here's my new heater. It looks great, doesn't it?

But it didn't seem like it was generating that much heat. I peered in through the slits. I'd turn it off, then turn it back on. The fan would kick in and heat would come out. Then the fan would go off and an orange light would go one.

Hrm. What could that be, I thought. Standby mode? 

I looked in the manual. 

Oh. That's the thermal protection light. It comes on when something goes wrong. 

I shut it off at the breaker and gave it the finger. That'll show that heater. 

Awaiting the Punchline

Friday afternoon, my office phone rang. I waved to my guests - a writer and an assistant - to shush for a moment and answered.

"Marie Javins." (I've been answering my phone like this since the co-publisher called one day and I awkwardly missed a beat as I held the handset to my ear and tried to remember where I was. I'm terrified I'll say "Marvel" or "Teshkeel" when I pick up.)

"May I speak with Archie Goodwin?"

Archie died in 1998. He'd been my first boss when he was the head of the trailblazing Epic Comics when I'd interned there in 1988, and he is rightfully revered as one of the most innovative voices ever to make mainstream sequential art periodicals (you know, comic books) and graphic novels. He'd moved to DC from Marvel the year after I'd started at Marvel, when Epic had been involuntarily reorganized and brought under the Marvel umbrella.

"He doesn't work here anymore," I said, trying to sound neutral and unsurprised, resisting the urge to demand to know who one earth could have been calling 17 years too late. The area code was 407. "A sales call," I thought, but I don't know.

Then later, I wondered how that call had gotten to me, Archie's former subordinate from another time and company. I tried to find out Archie's old extension online and didn't make much progress. There just isn't much info indexed from 1998.

Then it occurred to me to reach under my home-office desk to the shelf at the back, to pull out and blow the dust off my ancient Rolodex.

Yep. I have Archie's old phone number.

Send Me Back to Work Already

Time off is clearly detrimental to my impulse to fix things. I don't even own this place! 

But I pulled up a piece of broken floorboard yesterday. It's a sample to go to a vintage flooring place, so I can match the old floorboards in a few weak spots. I'm pretty sure it's heart pine anyway, like in all the old tenements. I suspect this pipe running along all the weak spots has something to do with the situation.

Yes, I've piled books on top of the hole so I don't forget it's there. 

Good thing work starts again tomorrow. The only real damage of the holiday is an empty cavity where there was once a dangerous heater and a hole in the floor. 

Most people just overeat for the holidays. 

Happy DIY 2015

I started the year out strong, by dismantling an electric heater that's been terrifying me every winter morning in this apartment since I moved in back in 2007, and probably terrified my friend Yancey since the day he bought the place in the mid-nineties.

And once I dissected it, learning that one breaker powered only the heater and nothing else, I had no idea why it had taken me so long to realize that. I could have flipped the breaker years ago, left the heater in the wall, and not worried about a sublet person starting a fire or about the dangers of having a heating element covered in the accumulated dust of 1987 (when the building was "renovated") and 2014.

I want to congratulate myself and bask in the glory of dismantling a fire hazard. But instead, I just wonder why I didn't flip off the circuit breaker the first week I lived here.