The case of onion breath in The Amalgamated Aggromulator

So this happened this morning. At first, until I was interrupted by a puppy, I was typing up a Facebook dream report:

Dream:

The Chinese emperor (this in a world where the line never ended and probably a lot of other things back past the Opium Wars) was visiting town. He was staying in a vast, fancy expanded version of the Expo Center. Mom and I were going to go and see him, and, who knows, possibly actually meet him, and we had heard that protocol dictated that you bring gifts, so naturally we stopped at Powell's Books first. When we got to the Expo Center it was decorated in grand style for the occasion. Mom and I got separated, and I looked at the small stack of books I was carrying and realized that they weren't good enough to be gifts for the emperor, or even really for me, which is a low grade indeed; they were a bunch of fourth-rate potboilers. So I threw them away. But then I bumped into Mom again and was told that we actually were going to personally meet the emperor, and that we really were expected to each present gifts. Mom failed to notice that I had unburdened myself, but...

So there I was, running here and there through the huge Expo Center, rooting through the Dalek-like trashcans one by one, searching for the emperor's gifts, as fantastically uniformed Chinese imperial guards watched dubiously.

That was basically it, but I didn’t hit Post before the dog appeared and I started playing with him.

When I finally came back to the laptop, I had a bit more to add.

We depart from this dream account for a late-breaking bulletin. I made smothered cabbage and kielbasa yesterday, which, despite the name, contains about as many sautéed onions by volume as each of the other two ingredients when cooked.

This made it quite comprehensible that, when I sat up in bed this morning, I noticed that I had a colossal case of onion breath. The kind of onion breath you sit up through.

The onions had lingered in the kitchen as well when I went in there first thing to feed the cat and microwave some cold coffee. That's what happens when you skipped the dishes last night.

I ceased to notice anything as I sat in the living room to drink my coffee and type up this dream. Before I could post, the dog cantered out to get me and I took him for a walk...

... and, when we came back in the front door, the big smell struck me again. Like not just onions but *old* onions.

Or else, you know, like...

And I said it when I took the dog back in to Mom in her bed and brushed him. "You know, it's funny, when I came in, it really smelled like gas."

So then on impulse I wandered out to the kitchen...

... and I found that one of the gas burners on the stove was a little over halfway on, and unlit.

I stumble over myself hastening to comment that I'm 90-99% sure I didn't leave the burner on, and that nobody did, because then the burner would have stayed lit. Nothing would have extinguished it. (This is a situation we've observed.) But that means I don't know *how* it happened, because the burner knob would have had to be bumped to that position somehow, and those knobs are hard to bump off of Off.

In any case, I turned off the furnace and opened up every one of our doors and windows in thirty-degree temperatures. I turned on every ceiling fan we've got, and, as I did so, I found that all the cul-de-sac rooms in the house smelled obtrusively of gas, while in the central space it was much less noticeable.

I have a notion.

We've been using the gas furnace just lately rather than the heat exchanger thing, for reasons of financial pinch and relative cost. It's the "Emergency Heat" option on our panel. The air intake for the furnace pulls off the continuous central area... and any gas in the air it took in would have been burned up along with the other gas. The furnace had been quietly keeping the house warm all night, going on and off.

I think it at least conceivable that, if we'd been virtuously warming our house using electricity with the heat exchanger, either my report from this station this morning might have been on the dolorous side or there might have been no such report.

As it is, we're all fine, including the cat and dog. And the others here assembled have prevailed upon me to cut off the lovely fresh air and close the house back up when it got down to 60, despite the intuitive efficacy of the temperature as a guide to degree of air exchange. I would have taken it down to 50 myself, but you know. Household peace.

Last updated February 15, 2024