Telling it like it is

It looks like we're one day away from having our home back into some semblance of normality. The lads got a ton of wiring done today leaving 7 outlets and a three-way circuit to do tomorrow. A little tidying of old cables in the attic on saturday and we ought to be able to start tidying up, sweeping, hoovering and cleaning. I'm sure our cat will be very grateful when all the plastic on the carpet is gone, not to mention when all the 'strange people' stop coming and going. Well. For now. We need to get the ceiling put back up in the basement, of course, but that's a couple of months away.

I had a good close look at an H3 this morning on Foothill Drive. Not intentionally, of course, but the blonde airhead with her cellphone in one hand and her coffee in the other decided that the whole 'steering' thing was just too bothersome. So instead, she weaved across the road in front of me from the left lane to the right, missing the car in the centre lane. Not sure how she managed that, but anyway I digress. As she drifted into my lane, I slowed down to avoid the accident and she straightened up. Her left indicator came on - obviously the inadvertent drift into the right lane had put her in the wrong place. Ho hum. Another idiot woman driver. Slow down a touch, move to the right so I can see around her when she veers acro......what the FUCK? Handful of brake and clutch, swerve to the left, straighten up, down a couple of gears.....and we're safe. So, um, stopping to chat to a friend on the sidewalk, in rush hour traffic, with no working brakelights whilst indicating

As I stood in the shower this morning, I thought "this is odd - the pressure is back to about what it was before we had all the plumbing done." What I didn't know until afterwards was that the sprinklers were going at the same time. In House v1.0, if the sprinklers were on, you'd get barely a dribble from the shower. Now, it's amazing. I spent a couple of hours last night working the sprinklers to compensate for the new pressure and volume. It's like the fountains at Bellagio now. I've never seen our sprinkler system work so well.

That's that then. We've got a new main water service. It took a little longer than expected, thanks in part to the city gas main. But it's done and dusted. We got a new stop-and-waste valve for the sprinklers and a new sprinkler riser. The old one was leaking. When he pulled the old service line out, we discovered a 5cm gash in it too where it had been leaking. He sawed the pipe into pieces and we looked at the inside - totally coated in calcium and in some places, it was so thin it's a wonder we didn't have more leaks. But we're done. One more day to go tomorrow. Meanwhile on the electrics, both bedrooms are complete and I've put a new fan/light combo up in our bedroom. Hopefully by the end of this week we'll be all done apart from putting the ceiling back up.

We've got two large holes dug in the garden now - one by the road and one next to the house. Rock has managed to pull the old section of pipe out through the foundation ready to put the new one in there. He's still got to tackle the long section coming out under the lawn. We discovered two things - first - the supply pipe was 3/4 inch but was so full of shite that it was literally 1/2 inch inside. And second, some of the wall of that pipe was so thin it could literally have been a couple of months before it burst under the garden. So all in all, good job we're having it done. So I've got a house full of electrical and plumbing contractors today.