d3l1r1um

Books Finished
- Devil's Gun by Cat Rambo [e-audio]
- So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish by Douglas Adams [e-audio] (multiple reread)
- Drive by Daniel H. Pink [e-audio]
- Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams [e-audio] (multiple reread)
- How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse by K. Eason [e-audio]
- How the Multiverse Got its Revenge by K. Eason [e-audio]
- Rumor Has It by Cat Rambo [e-audio]
- The Shivers Amazon short story collection [e-audio]
- Doughnut by Tom Holt [e-audio]
- When It's a Jar by Tom Holt [e-audio]
- Dave Barry is from Mars AND Venus by Dave Barry [e-audio]
- The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie [Kindle]
- A Stroke of the Pen: The Lost Stories by Terry Pratchett [e-audio]

Library DVDs/Streaming Programs Watched
- Resident Alien: S2D4 [1 equiv] (rewatch, now w/ Josh)
- Cobra Kai: S6P3 [1 equiv]
- Star Trek: The Next Generation: S3D2-3 [2] (long ago rewatch)
- Moon Knight [2]

Hoo boy. When we arrived at Mom's house today, we smelled gas outside the front door. Her furnace vent is pretty near the front door, so I've smelled a little gas there before and had a furnace tech assure me it's not that unusual. Today, though, it was even stronger when we went in. The whole house smelled of gas, but nothing seemed obviously wrong and the basement didn't seem as bad. We opened up a bunch of windows to try to clear it out, with the suspicion that Mom had left a burner on but unlit for some length of time.

We had lunch on the deck and I went back in to refill meds, and was getting nauseous, so I moved us all to the front porch (shadier than the deck) and called the gas company. They sent a nice man out who went all through the house with me, checking all the gas lines and appliances. By that point the main floor was mostly fine, but the basement still smelled strongly of gas. He found nothing wrong, and agreed that it was likely Mom had left a stove burner slightly open but unlit for quite some time, like maybe overnight. So I made the hard decision to turn off the gas valve to the stove. No more cooking on stove or in oven for her. She's lucky to be alive! He also helped open a couple of basement windows and I got a fan in the doorway to push the bad air up the stairs and draw fresh in through the windows, and it was all much better by the time we left a couple hours later (after closing the windows I knew Mom wouldn't look at or couldn't get to herself).

However, now that I think about it, I have another possibility that we may need to investigate ASAP. The heat was on when we got there. A few weeks ago her furnace was acting up, and throwing an error code indicating an issue somewhere in the combustion process. The HVAC folks came out and diagnosed an intermittently failing gas valve, and they replaced it (for $$$). I'm now wondering if it's possible that the actual problem was a partially blocked exhaust line, and that's now causing some waste gas to slowly back up into the house. My exhaust was blocked with a rodent nest a couple years ago and it was causing the second stage blower to not kick on (too much backpressure), and they misdiagnosed it the first time. I didn't have gas smell, but I've also never smelled gas in my furnace's exhaust.

Lending more weight to this idea is that when we visited last weekend, she was sick. I assumed she'd probably eaten some janky food that I hadn't gotten out of her fridge in time, but now I'm wondering. My aunt said she smelled a sour smell when she was there on Thursday, but didn't think about gas until I'd mentioned it today. She also said Mom was really tired.

Also, I need to buy her a CO detector. I realized she doesn't have one.