up next: locusts

I'm fairly certain the Apocalypse is nigh.

Monday, when we were leaving for work, we noticed the street in front of our house (running under the Subaru) was wet. Not standing water, but like when a hose runs over a little bit. Didn't really think anything of it until we got home and noticed that the same spot was still there. We go up to our water meter box thingie (in the sidewalk strip) and there's water pooled a little bit in the rocks around it. Sal lifts the cover and the meter is submerged in water. Great.

It wasn't like a major leak or anything, but obviously, Something Was Not Right. We called the City but they couldn't come out until yesterday, and they determine that the leak was on our side of the meter, not theirs, so it was up to us to fix it. I call a plumbing company we use at work, they're great and are willing to give me our work discount, but they can't come out until today. And they didn't know what time today, which necessitated me working from home so I could be here. Hooray for telecommuting, at least.

Well, they came around 1:30 and have determined that we need to have a new main line run from our meter to our house. The leak is somewhere behind the big foundation wall in front of our house (our worst suspicion) and to repair it would involve tearing down that wall, digging down to freaking China, and having a structural engineer oversee rebuilding the wall, not to mention having to replace the sidewalk. In other words, it was cheaper to replace the entire line (they can just bore alongside the old one and without having to dig anything up, thank goodness) than to try to find the link and repair it.  The good news is that they'll be able to start and finish it tomorrow. The bad news is that Sal and I are going to have to sell a kidney. It's probably my turn, since he sold one of his for the last major financial disaster.

So I stay home today and just because today couldn't possibly be any worse, I woke up this morning to a house with no heat. In fact, that's why I woke up AT FIVE AM A FULL HOUR EARLIER THAN MY USUAL TIME BECAUSE THE ICE ON MY PILLOW WASN'T VERY CONDUCIVE TO SLEEP AND MY NOSE WAS DEVELOPING FROSTBITE AND I THINK I SAW A DUSTBUNNY ICE CUBE. Something's wrong with the thermostat, although I gave up trying to figure out exactly what around 11:30 and have since been working from the dining room table with a space heater and blanket wrapped around me all day. As of right now, it's slightly warmer outside our house than inside. Sal's going to try to get that fixed tonight so hopefully we won't freeze to death. But if you read about a couple of Hall-sicles in the news, you'll know what happened.

And finally, my cable modem was down not once but THREE SEPARATE GODDAMN TIMES today, although I was able to get that working again AFTER MUCH SCREAMING AND HURLING ABOUT OF THINGS. Poor Sally, who had to listen to me have a breakdown over the phone and who cut his day short at work to try to save me from our house, which is trying to kill me. But, BUT! I have been working diligently on my work stuff.  DEAR EMPLOYERS NEVER FEAR I HAVE BEEN A PRODUCTIVE EMPLOYEE DESPITE ALL THE DRAMA THAT IS MY LIFE AT THE MOMENT AND SERIOUSLY YOU SHOULD TOTALLY BE GLAD I'M SO DEDICATED BECAUSE OMG WOE KTHXBYE.

I fully expect the Four Horseman to show up for dinner.