Ben and I had a very romantic weekend. We planned to meet at the cottage - him coming from the west and me from the east. I got there at about 4:00 pm to discover that the furnace was not working. I lit both fires and tried to warm the place up while calling all of the furnace people in my family to ask for advice. After trying all possible furnace fixes, I concluded that it was broken and would need a repair man. It was now after 5:30 and I figured we'd have to wait until the next day for someone to come. So, I made the best of the situation and set up a make-shift bed in front of the fire in the living room. Ben came in around 10 exhausted from his 5 hour drive through rush-hour and dark country roads ready to hit the hay. We snuggled in for the night, it had become nice and warm by then in the living room. At around 5 am we woke up freezing our bums off, as the fire had gone out and the room was quickly losing heat through the lovely big windows. Ben got up and got us another duvet and stoked the fire. We slept until 9.

Then we called the furnace guy who fixed it, but not until after he'd said he wasn't going to crawl below the cottage because he has a fake leg.

After the furnace started working, we discovered that it wouldn't shut off - leading to a day of turning and breaker for the furnace on and off and Ben trying to fix the thermostat while I contended that it wasn't a thermostat problem but a controller problem at the furnace level (engineering arguments - how boring). Yet again I woke up at 5 am freezing my bum off because Ben insisted on turning off the furnace before we went to bed, citing the "it's better to be a bit cold and snuggle rather than sweating" argument. He was probably right, but I was damn cold when I woke up! Despite all this, we managed to have a lovely day on Saturday and a romantic dinner for our anniversary (3 years!) with my Jamie Oliver Cauliflower and Broccoli Cannelloni (It was not as easy as it looked on Jamie at Home) and a nice Riesling.

Today we took all the boats out of the water and stowed them under the cottage - earned our hearty vegetable soup and cheese toasties lunch!