Sitting in the basement, you start thinking about how much things have changed the last

nine months.

As things slowly unraveled and a constant murmuring of things can't get any worse, proved

to be false hope time and time again you

may do with what remained.

The ravages of winter had managed to come in hard and everyone was in the same boat.

There was no oil left in the building, in the neighborhood, or in the region, really.

The guy who lived above you, the one who was always having ragers, and had a dog whose nails

perennially needed to be clipped.

It sounded like tap dancing every morning at 5 a.m. when he was getting ready for work.

Turns out he was a heating mechanic, which is a really great skill to have when your heat doesn't

work, and you needed to make it burn, well, anything you could get your hands on.

Today everyone was meeting to discuss the new heating system.

Joe was able to rerun the ductwork of the building so the entire building was on one combustion system.

He described what it was actually called, but you don't really remember.

You don't know much about heating systems, but you had nothing else to do, so you decided to help

him out.

Help out is probably too generous.

You carried stuff for him.

Oh, yeah, and you helped Joe steal a bi-gas combustion system out of his company's warehouse.

Either way, you got the job done, and it felt really good, to be totally honest.

It was the first time you were proud of something since this whole shitstorm happened.

...