woke up on a blustery saturday morning a couple of weeks ago, and elysse said to me "i was dreaming about jack in the box last night." and then she gave me the puppydog eyes.
the nearest jack in the box is three hours away in nashville. "no way", i said.
several hours later, after a quick run to gruhn's (so the trip wouldn't be a totally pointless venture), we stood at the counter of jack in the box and ordered twenty dollars' worth of tacos, burgers, fries, egg rolls, mozarella sticks, and an oreo shake. we ate what we could hold, and put the rest in a bag to take home and put in the fridge for later.
but when we got home at 11:30pm, we heard a strange hissing sound emanating from the back of the house... not a good sign. and the back porch windows were all fogged up.
turns out the copper pipes running hot and cold water to the washing machine had frozen, and the hot water pipe burst, spewing water all over the back porch. the dugout basement had about an inch of water standing in some spots.
we looked in the phone book for emergency plumbers; most of them said "sorry, no can do". why do you say "24 hour emergency service" if you won't make house calls at night on the weekend? the fourth one we called actually showed up, and spent two hours trying to solder a coupling onto the painted pipes. at 2 in the morning, after writing a $175 check, we had water again.
per his suggestion, we went to lowe's and picked up some foam insulation, to keep the breeze off the pipes. got some duck tape, too. $10.
then, today, when i got back from playing music over at kaeff's place in georgetown, elysse greeted me at the door with more news: the pipe burst again, and we had a mudbowl in the basement.
great.
turns out the coupling, so painstaking soldered on in the middle of the night to a painted pipe, just popped loose. whoosh. couldn't get a hold of the guy who had done the original work, so we got another guy, who sanded the paint off and put a new coupling on in about fifteen minutes. ten dollars' worth of parts and $108 dollars in labor. i'm in the wrong freakin' business.
in an attempt to prevent this happening again (keep in mind these pipes had not burst in thirty years) we went to home depot to buy a space heater. given that this january has been incredibly cold (says kk, "i haven't seen my testicles in two weeks"), the lady we waylaid to help us at home depot laughed at us when we asked for a space heater. "you and everybody else in the world. let me show you what we have left."
we wound up with a $60 oil-filled, temperature-controlled radiator, just the right size to fit between the washer and dryer, and supposedly safe to leave on 24-7 during the winter months.
total: 175+10+118+60 = $363.
i'm wondering if this isn't the house retaliating because it's heard us talking about needing more living space and bedrooms.
Sat Jan 25 19:02:32 PST 2003