Heat! That's what I'm talkin' about (among other things)!

Our furnace has not worked properly since we moved in. Every now and then it would suddenly go out. Every time this would happen I'd have to go into the basement, press a button, and everything would be hunky-dory. Sometimes it would go out two or three times in a day, and then it wouldn't go out for a month or so. That was, until a couple of days ago. Suddenly, when I'd press the reset button, it would go back on for about thirty minutes, then....nothing. The house wouldn't get cold, but since we have hot water heat, the hot water would eventually disappear, and we'd be taking cold showers.
So, today I called the service company (Rosenmund), and a nice gentleman came out and repaired the furnace. He was in the basement clanking away for about an hour or so between the furnace and King's litter box. Luckily, I had cleaned the litter box right before the guy came, and King didn't feel the need to use it while the man was down there working. Otherwise, the repairman would have experienced a natural gas smell that even he had probably never before encountered. Anyway, the furnace is only temporarily repaired. A part needs to be ordered, and it will be installed next week. After the repairman left, I noticed that it was suddenly too warm in the house. I had to actually adjust the temperature on my thermostat which is a pretty rare thing. If I had to guess, I'd say the thermostat in our living room is adjusted maybe two or three times per winter. This is a far cry from my mother-in-law Jo who adjusts her thermostat two to three times per half-hour sitcom.
Mrs. TBF, as you probably know, was in Chicago last week visiting with family and friends. One of things that drove her crazy when she was staying at Jo's house was that Jo has this irresistable urge to get up from the sofa about every ten minutes to adjust the temperature on her thermostat. Let me tell you, I've witnessed this phenomenon many times, and I have to say that it is pretty high on the annoy-O-meter. No matter how many times you try to tell her that the whole reason for the thermostat's existence (especially a programmable thermostat like she has) is to maintain a fairly constant temperature, she just won't listen to/believe you. Mrs. TBF swears that she heard Jo adjust the thermostat right before she went to bed, DURING THE NIGHT, and first thing in the morning (although Jo claimed that the early morning beeps came from the microwave). Now that I think about it, whenever Jo comes to visit us, she must teeter on the edge of insanity. First of all, every radiator has a dial on it so that you can raise or lower the heat. This dial goes from 1 to 5. I doubt, however, if Jo touches the one in the guest room because...
1) she has no idea what temperature the numbers correspond to 2) she's afraid she'll cause some kind of explosion if she touches the thing. Secondly, the one thermostat in our house that controls the living room is in Celsius. I know for certain that Jo has no clue what 20ºC means, and that she's afraid that if she turns the temperature up to 25ºC she'll...cause some kind of explosion. Fear of explosion, being high on Jo's list of fears, results in her just doing/saying nothing. The end result is that she just stays cold. This in turn, ends up on her post-visit list of complaints.
The list of complaints is never disclosed to us directly by Jo. However, we can always count on her revealing the list to Perry and Renee (my brother-in-law and sister-in-law) upon her return to Chicago. They, in turn, immediately reveal the list to us. What was on last year's list you ask?
1) "The house was too cold!" (I say it's just thermostat-adjustment withdrawl.)
2) "We walked too much." (I did actually make her walk seven minutes to and from the tram a couple of times, but I usually drove her into town and paid exorbitant parking fees.)
3) "We ate dinner too late." (I'm sorry, but I'm just not ready to eat dinner at 3:30 p.m.)
4) "TBF makes fun of me." (Guilty! I have to admit that one time I did hear her go into the guest bathroom, and I couldn't help calling out that I could hear her through the walls and would she please light a match! However, this was an isolated incident, and I think that overall I'm a pretty good son-in-law.)
How the heck did I end up talking about all this? Who knows? What's important is that the furnace is working again, and I probably won't have to touch the thermostat again until Christmas.