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Joys of home ownership, up and down

Well, *this* has been an interesting few hours.

Last night while we were waiting for dinner, we heard some kind of bang. I went to the basement hall and saw the cats near the litterbox looking perplexed. I thought they were fighting or something. Then I heard a hissing noise.

I scurried under the stairwell and saw a spray coming from the main water line. Uh-oh! A leak!

I had Amanda grab a bucket and some towels while I shut off the line ahead of the meter.

A call to the city's emergency number summoned a repairman about an hour later. He arrived ... leaving a trail of blood down the stairs. Yeah, apparently he'd cut himself on an earlier call and the dirty bandage just wasn't keeping the crimson nectar inside his body.

Anyway, he muttered something about the packing in the valve being bad or something. And something about washers being made of leather. In the end, he fixed it.

So, crisis solved.

Then ... about 15 minutes ago ... that'd be about 7:30 ... we were awaked by the doorbell.

It was Bernie! Bernie! Bernie from Coughlan's Roofing! Yeah, Bernie from Coughlan's Roofing here to do the roof! Bernie who was supposed to call on Monday! Or Tuesday! Or even yesterday to say he'd be coming by today to replace our roof.

No problem that it's raining today. "It's not going to rain!" says the young man on our roof, tearing off shingles with roofing nails flying around. "We haven't worked all week, so it's not going to rain on us today!"

At present, the house is shaking like God is cleaning his shoes on our eaves. The cats are either intrigued, alarmed or bored.

I must learn how to ambush people in their sleep as a tactic to profit and succeed in life.

I am so dearly looking forward to sleeping in on Saturday morning.

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