THERMOSTAT WARS

Buckshot asked me when I first moved in what I liked the thermostat set at.

“68 degrees in the winter is fine with me” I said.
“That’s good for me too” says Buckshot.

I didn’t think anything else about it really, except that I must be getting wimpy because I would wake up in the morning and be freezin’ my ass off.
November turned to December and December to January and we don’t get a lot of cold weather down here in Texas, but there were some mornings that rattled my teeth, standing in front of the mirror bare-beamed and butt naked trying to shave.

One particularly frosty morning I went downstairs to check the heater.
Holy Shit!
It was 63 degrees in the house! The thermostat was set at 62!
No wonder! So I bumped it up to 68 and didn't think much of it until the next morning when I woke up about 4am out of my covers and freezinfuckin cold and went downstairs and its back on 62 again so I bump it up to 68 and go back to bed. But an hour later I wake up and it’s still frosty as hell--I can see my breath -- so I go downstairs and that’s when I notice that not only was the stat set to 62, but the heater itself had been turned off!

The weather here in Texas changes real fast, and I figure that Buckshot is turning the heater off sometimes, and somehow the thermostat is defaulting to 62 degrees, so I just decide to start checking it regularly.

Last Friday night I check it before bed. Its at 68. I wake up at 5 am and I’m not really cold, but I go check it just the same. Its back down to 62! So I bump it up to 68 and go back to bed. I’m wondering how it keeps getting down to 62 and decide I’ll have to ask Buckshot what’s going on when I get a chance.

So I wake up at 7 am, and it seems a little cool, so I go down to check it.
What do you know! Not only is it back down to 62, but the unit is turned all the way off!
And that son-of-a-gun Buckshot has got to be doing it because he left for work about an hour ago.
So I called him up on the telephone.
“Hello”
“Hey Buckshot, have you been turning the heater down to 62 degrees?”
‘What’s the matter, are you cold?”
“God damn right I’m cold. My pecker looks like I’m six years old.”
‘Well go ahead and turn it back up if you need to”
“I did. But I don’t just have to turn it up, I have to turn it back on. Because somebody name of Buckshot is turning it off.”
“I’m sorry Bulletholes. It’s a habit. I turn it off in the morning to save on electricity”
“You know what Buckshot? You may as well set it at 78 if you are going to turn it off”
“OK. How about if we set it at 67?” he says.
“Buckshot, I’m freezing my ass off. How about 68 just like we said. And just leave it there. As long as the house doesn’t drop below 68 degrees, the heater wont come on”
“OK”. He sounds dejected, like he’s losing a ton of money.

So what do you think has been going on since then? That’s right. He drops it to 66, I reset at 68. He drops it to 64, I reset to 68. Yesterday it was at 67. I bumped it up to 68.
We’re getting warmer.
But I expect to come home one day and there will be a lock on the thermostat.