Today, my morning was supposed to start with a routine trip to the dentist. I needed a cleaning, and wanted to find out about getting my top two front teeth rebonded, since they had been done a really long time ago and are starting to drive me crazy with the way they look. It didn't quite turn out that way.

Instead, we woke up to find that, once again, we had no heat. Immediately, my thought was that we had run out of oil. We got a large delivery in the spring last year, but to my recollection hadn't had one since, and the heat's been running a lot lately with the recent cold spell. I looked up the number for the oil/heating company, which just happens to be about two blocks away from the house, and called and identified myself. When I told the gentleman on the other end that I wanted to get a small oil delivery just to tide us over until we move at the end of the month, he responded with, "I'm sorry, hon, but we can't deliver any oil or do any service at your house any more. The owners owe us too much money." Where have I heard THIS song before? Anyway, I was confused, because we've been paying for our own oil all along, and we've always made the payment promptly. When I asked the man about this, he indicated that yes, we had paid on time, but that the owner of the company was vehement that no further service was to be provided to our house. I burst into tears. That seemed to soften Mr. Oil Man a little bit, and he agreed to have someone deliver a hundred gallons of oil to get us through the end of the month, as long as I agreed to drop off a check by tomorrow. He also noted that I'd probably have to have a service person come by to relight the furnace, since it had apparently gone out. The oil truck pulled up as I was leaving for the dentist, and I was on my not-so-merry way. The dentist brought good news and bad news -- the good news is that my teeth are in pretty good shape, and that the insurance company will almost certainly pay for new laminates on my front two teeth, since the existing bonding is chipping away. The bad news is that I have a broken filling and a tiny new cavity. Bleah. Toting my new toothbrush, I drove over to the oil company and dropped off the payment for the oil, assuring the nice man and his wife that the check would clear. They filled me in on the dastardly doings of the landlord, including showing me a stack of post-dated checks that he had left and then called to tell them not to deposit. Mr. Oil Man then kindly dispatched the repair guy to my house to fix the furnace, so that I wouldn't have to leave work early to get home to meet him. Apparently all that was needed was a new filter and some other small parts, and I promised to pay for the repair, and will be deducting said repair from this month's rent check. The kicker is that the oil company notified the landlords via certified letter that they would no longer be providing fuel or service to the house, and the landlords never told us anything. It's a good thing that the heat went out on a weekday morning, instead of the middle of the night or on a weekend, because Mr. Oil Man said that they definitely would not have provided service in that instance. I feel like I should send Mr. Oil Man a fruit basket or something for his kindness.