The inch of snow we received last night was virtually gone by the time I woke up this morning. It was a rough night with foot and knee pain keeping me up most of the night that and the thought that my heating oil could run out anytime while I was asleep. But first, I'll have to explain how I got there:

I figured that the mild weather from December through mid-January would insulate me from having to refill until later in the month. But, late Saturday night the new furnace started making noises and the temp inside the apartment dropped by 20 degrees. Nothing I could do until morning.

So the biting cold of the apartment woke me up, and I decided to call the heating oil company. I forgot their office was closed on Sundays so a bored sounding woman from one of those private answering firms handled my call. I answered all of her questions reminding myself that was some contract secretary who probably never heard of Shamokin.

Ten minutes later I get a call from a guy from the heating oil company.

"Dis Johnny Twiggah?" he said. "We ain' got no cusdomers by dat name, whatya trying to pull?" Look harder, you dickhead.

"Considering it was your company's truck that refilled my tanks last November."

"Ya shure id was us?"

"There's only company in this area with your name, and I paid it $638 for that last fucking load."

"Wait... That's Doc's (my dad) address, ain' it?"

"Uh, duh."

"We ain't got oil on Sundays, but we can sen' someone over with anuff fa morning."

"Thank you."

So I wait about an hour and a beaten up van with the company's logo pulls into the alley and parks near the fuel chute. An old guy, probably in his late sixties, gets out of the van.

I lead the guy downstairs and he bangs the large empty tanks to verify that they are indeed empty (and not as just "clogged"). So I take him upstairs and he pulls out two gas cans and tries to pour them into the chute. It was actually kind of funny watching this old guy try and get the oil into the tank since the siphon and chute were not the same size, and then watching him wipe up the spilled oil with a greasy rag from the van.

"We god maybe 95-98% of the stuff in there," he told me. "Hopefully, dis'll be anuff ta last through da night. An we can get a truck out here inda morning."

I had finally just fallen asleep when they arrived. I told the guy who came yesterday I was only interested in getting one tank filled, but the receipt on my door this morning read "refill: 250 gal - tanks empty."