It's ALIVE!

Hooray! My furnace and AC work again.
It was just a minor repair to replace a wire that had gotten old and cracked and broken...so it arced the side of the furnace instead of being one piece and starting the fan motor like it should have. According to the guy I got to fix it, it does look like the wiring in the furnace is old and getting brittle so we need to look into replacing either it or the furnace in the next 1-2 years to be safe. He left us with some options to think about...to replace all the internal electrical in the furnace (which is about 40 years old and really inefficient) would cost about 700-1000...and a whole new furnace would cost ~3500. So...it will take some thinking and planning...that's a lot of lettuce.
Either way I'm not comfortable with leaving old wiring in there long term, because, honestly this could just happen again, eventually. He said the wires in there looked OK as of now, but you never know...he recommended not to leave it longer than 2 years, just for safety. I know I don't want to worry about that sort of thing happening again when we're not home...it should just blow the breaker. This arc actually made a little hole in the side of the furnace box (spooky) We were lucky this time and should be responsible and look into fixing it properly.
Thankfully this repair guy is one who was honest with us and he helped us fix our furnace motor in the middle of the night mid winter and was helpful and honest when everyone else tried to screw us over or lie to us about cost. I called him to install our gas stove too. He's' a good local guy who doesn't BS, so I trust him. He can put in new furnaces too, so I'm going to get him to quote us and see what our options are. By spring we can look at what to do. I like supporting local nice honest people.

It's nice to know it's fixed though. Man, electrical things always creep me right out...