Those on the call this morning know that I've been without heat. My Datalog plugin tells me the furnace went out last night at 7:30, hours before its scheduled setback, and didn't come on at all this morning despite my pleading with the computerized thermostat.
My heating service plan includes priority emergency service. But they tell me maybe today, maybe tomorrow. So with my Explorer Scout connections I thought to build a campfire. expand 
This works. The kitchen and family-room together have warmed one degree in 15 minutes. I had to turn the circulation fan up to high because on low the microwave got warm enough to switch on its own emergency exhaust fan. Come on appliances, let's work together, eh?
(an hour passes)
Service arrives. Heat is on again. Seems a screw terminal on a controller board inside the furnace wasn't making a good connection. Long-term temperature cycling probably contributes to such failures.
Here I compare the slopes of my various solutions. Notice that my upstairs office didn’t even see the space heater I had running in the kitchen. But the stove, with all four burners running, that heated the whole house. expand 
I turned the campfire off when the experts arrived. I didn’t want to scare them with what I had been doing. After the furnace worked again the temperature soared without me.
I was in the process of rigging up an aluminum foil heat shield to keep the microwave from turning on the emergency exhaust fan. No need.
Note to self: the microwave does not experience the blast of radiant heat from four burners running when there are pots and pans on the burners. The bottom of the microwave was too hot to touch in my configuration.
Anyway, the furnace has nearly finished warming the house while I type this note. Furnace = Awesome.
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This page assembled from texts and tweets to friends from the weekly call, a colleague at work whom I had just equiped with his own temperature sensor, and my wife who is traveling but still helped me get in touch with the furnace people.
See Furnace Sensor