When would warped logic have it to represent the optimum time for a furnace to break down? Why, of course during the depths of winter, when the winds are raging and snow blizzards the atmosphere. Our furnace is fine, chugging along nicely, warming our home, while a storm whips about us. And of course, a furnace is a hard-working beast, and it is in the winter that it performs its duty; little wonder that stress and strain of use over time causes furnaces to give up the operational ghost in such an untimely manner, so inconveniently.

No, it wasn't the furnace that gave out for us today. It was our equally elderly snow thrower. Kind of. We're in the throes of a quite impressive storm front. High, raging winds, snow heaping the atmosphere, and it's quite cold as well, since the high for the day is only minus-9-degrees C. This is a large storm, not only is all of southern Ontario affected, to the extent that authorities are asking people to get out on the road only in emergencies - a good stretch of the 401 has been shut down because of numerous road accidents and one fatality, but a good portion of the U.S. eastern seaboard is affected as well. Boston has shut down all their roads; they're receiving even more radical weather than we are, in Massachusetts, Connecticut and elsewhere.

My husband was out at mid-morning to move the accumulated snow. It had snowed all night long, but in tiny flakes that really hadn't amounted to much of an accumulation. By the time he ventured out with his snow thrower he judged about six inches were down. As soon as he finished blowing it all out, the wind did its utmost to blow it all back in, throwing it off the roof, off trees, wherever it could manage to wreak its havoc.

The snow thrower is about twenty-five years old. It was bought second-hand, and we've had it for twenty-two years. It is a gas-powered machine with an electrical starter. It can also be started by that old tried-and-true-but-balky-and-awkward method used as alternates for boat motors and lawn mowers, but it does protest at that usage, and prefers that it be started electrically. Oops, this morning one of the prongs of the electrical plug finally gave way to metal fatigue.

It can be fixed, but the entire electrical apparatus must be replaced. The parts alone will cost $150 to $200, and then there's the cost of the labour involved in the replacement process. Cheaper than buying a new one, but perhaps in the long run, better to retire the old workhorse? Here's hoping, because the storm is just yet in its mid-phase, that the snow thrower will be amenable to starting with the old tug-and-pull method.