Waste of a perfectly good day

As the Teeming Millions know, we had a gas leak. We called the gas company to come out on Saturday, and they confirmed we not only had a leak, but it was a big one & coming from the floor furnace. Saturday afternoon (evening really, it was nearly 5:00) I called a plumber. The guy answering the phone took all the info & said someone would be out Monday morning between 9:00 & 11:00.

I e-mailed my boss to let him know I'd be late & why. At 11:30 this morning, no one had shown up so I called the plumber. No record of my call, no record of the appointment. Grrrr! The guy said he'd call me back, which he did in a few minutes saying there was a plumber in the area who was just finishing up a job & would be here "shortly." Two hours later I call again to find out when this guy is going to show up. I'm told "Not more than 15 minutes." 25 minutes later he finally arrived.

So, he takes a look at the furnace, has his assistant go under the house to take pictures, and long story short the furnace is toast AND the waterline to the icemaker is spraying like a fountain. I shut the water off to that of course, and now we need to decide if we're going to get a new floor furnace, or spring for central heating. I didn't get pricing on the latter so we'll have to look into that. Ralph is willing to wait another week if necessary so we can research. It's awkward not being able to cook, or wash dishes, or run the clothes dryer (luckily we can still do cold-water washes & hang the laundry on the clothesline), not to mention showering in the trailer, but it'll be worth it knowing that we did our research & made an informed decision.

I did get some knitting done at least. I decided to go ahead & make the octopus juggling balls; started them last week & as of this evening now have one completely done & one partially done. I need to knit 10 more tentacles & knit them together into body pieces, one more head/mantle piece, then graft everything together. So, not quite halfway there I would say.

Pizza for dinner tonight. Man, I'll be glad when I can cook again. OK, technically I *could* cook on the trailer stove, but it's really not set up for anything fancy. The oven doesn't heat evenly (the top is burned before the bottom is cooked) & the stove area is small; hard to prep the food beforehand.

Had some excitement this morning, though. I was sitting in my green chair when suddenly the cat came tearing full-speed across the room. It took me a second to realize he was chasing a bird! I hustled to get all the pets locked up (not an easy task as they all were far more interested in pouncing on the bird than in going into the hallway) & then tried to catch the poor sparrow. I probably could have caught it a lot faster if I had remembered to close the bedroom door; then it couldn't have kept hiding under the bed. Eventually it flew back into the dining room & landed on the window shade. I was able to catch it in the large fish net we use on the aquarium and took it outside. When I opened the net the bird lay so limp and still I thought it had died from all the adrenaline, but then whoosh! It flew away so fast it made me jump. Whew!