I thought gas was supposed to be cheaper this season

We're back to getting extremely high gas bills. It's so nice in the summer when the bills are like $30. Our last bill, which was not based on an actual meter reading was $274.78. If it were based on a real reading I would guess that it would be much lower as the weather has been down right balmy (except for today). Along with our bill came a card that asked us to read our own meter and send back the number, and a note asking us to make an appointment to have our meter replaced. I called.

The PGW guy came yesterday and replaced our meter -- it is now set to 00000. He had to turn off the gas to make the switch. When he turned it back on he reset the pilots on the hot water heater and furnace. While he was relighting the pilot on our hot water heater he took the liberty of resetting the temperature at which we keep our hot water. My shower this morning began with scalding hot water. I had to turn the nob to almost exclusively cold to get a temperature my skin could tolerate. It is of course to PGW's advantage to have our hot water heater set so high. It's ashame because I really liked the guy who came. He pointed out that we need to clean out our chimney so the gas fumes will be able to escape, and he explained how the new meter works. With the new battery the PGW truck will be able to read the signal on the meter by driving by our house. Apparently the old battery was dead and the trucks weren't getting a signal when they drove by. That's why I had to read the meter for them last month.

I hope we don't get a $400 bill like we did last winter. It just seems ridiculous to pay that much in one month to be moderately warm.