A bad night to run low on oil
It's a cold night in Portland tonight (-5C, with wind gusts up to 40(!)mph), and, of course, the time when we last filled the oil tank we only filled in to half full because we filled it on the second of September, three days after the US Government abandoned New Orleans to the wolves. So this week it ran down to just about nothing, and when we looked in at the oil gauge this evening it was at a cup or two above bone dry.
Fortunately we've got a cheapy heater insert in our downstair stove, and we've got a big pile of scraps of wood left over from building furniture out of palletwood. We've not run the fireplace for several years, due to it being an irresistable Baby Magnet (running to the emergency room in the middle of the night with a sick or injured baby in tow is, at least as far as I'm concerned, vastly overrated) but given the choice between putting up a fence between the bears and the inferno, or freezing our little butts off in a large and poorly insulated house, putting up the fence is the warmest choice.
We'll order more oil in the morning, but for tonight it's time to convert wood into ash, co2, and bucketloads of heat.