I woke up this morning to Jolie barking non-stop (nothing unusual). What I didn't realize at first was that Jolie was telling me that something was seriously wrong. I got up and there was a terrible oil smell coming from the basement. I then called Amanda and she said there was black smoke coming from the chimney when she left a few minutes before.

I called the oil company to come take a look. In the meantime, the smell was getting worse so I went outside to see the smoke and it was pitch black (mind you... it's a sheet of ice outside and I'm in my pajamas). I called Amanda back to find out where the emergency cut-off switch for the oil burner was because I was afraid the entire house was going to blow-up. She is MUCH calmer than I am in these situations. Although, I did managed to put a bra during all of this comotion.

The oil guy is still here cleaning our oil burner which was completely plugged (hence the smell and black smoke). Fortunately, some day oil burners will be obsolete, but until then, we now know that we need an anuual cleaning of the oil burner!

The very interesting thing is that I was supposed to head back to Boston today. 1) I'm glad there was ice on the roads so that I couldn't drive to Boston. and 2) I'm glad we have dogs that are so sensitive to the environment around us. Jolie probably saved our house.