Shopping

I really should get rid of my Internet connection.  Except that I would be lost without it.  So why am I saying that?  I have been shopping almost non-stop for the last month and much of it has been online shopping.  

Partly my shopping has been because I've been depressed about various things (house issues and health issues).  When I'm depressed, nothing cheers me up like spending money.  Unfortunately, that's especially true if my depression is related to money issues!  So that's partly it, but the other part of it is that I'm doing a good job losing weight.  I'm now 20 pounds lighter than my peak weight!  That's wonderful and I'm enjoying my new weight, but the downside is that literally NONE of my clothes fit me.  Pants fall off unless I cinch them up with a belt, and then they and my tops look like I'm wearing bags.  I've gone shopping at the stores, but  often cannot find styles I like.  So I'm doing a lot of my shopping online.

If I were restricting it to clothes shopping, this rationalization would work better.   Truthfully, I'm just shopping.  On top of that, this time of year is when I usually do my Christmas shopping.  I get more than 10 catalogs a day in the mail, and I shop for Christmas presents.  This year the family decided to only gift the grand-kids, so that shopping outlet is not available to me.  When I hit a shopping mood like this, it doesn't matter very much who I'm buying for, as long as I'm buying stuff.  

Yup, they call that an addiction.  I'm going to need to work on reining it in a bit.  At least until my credit cards stop smoking. 

I'm beginning to get irritated with my newspaper delivery.  I've had to call 4 of the last 5 Sundays because my papers weren't delivered.  Looks like today is going to be the same again.  Considering what I pay for delivery, that's unacceptable.  And irritating.  I try to give him the benefit of the doubt and wait as long as I can, but if I don't call it in by 9:00 am, I don't get today's paper delivered.  Ah!  Just got them.  8:20 am.  He's pushing it.

I scheduled the plumbers to come and fix my leaks.  They'll be here the week before Thanksgiving, and expect it to take 3 - 4 days to complete.  So that will be my November expensive project.  They'll need to go through the floor in my guest bedroom to repair one leak.  That'll involve pulling the carpet back.  I talked them into trying to get to the leak under the master bathroom shower from the outside.  They said they would try that first, so I don't know whether I'll have to replace the bathroom tiles or not.  The third leak is not under the house, so they'll simply have to dig up my front lawn and shrubbery (again) to get to that one.  Then my December expensive project will be to have someone put my house back together.  Repair and repaint all the cracks, re-stretch the carpet and re-tile the bathroom if necessary.   Hopefully that will then be the last of the house-disruptive work I'll have to have done.  I hope anything I do in the future will be cosmetic and intentional.

I went to Lowe's yesterday and they no longer carry the grout they used when they put in my bathroom floor last year.  So if I do have to have that floor repaired I'm going to have to try to match the grout they used.  That'll be a pain.  Do you know how many different colors of off-white/beige there are?

I guess that's all for today.

Plumbers

The plumbers are here today to find my leaks.  Not to fix them.  That's the next plumbing appointment.  Today they're here to figure out how many there are and to locate them.  I'm finding out two things.  One, I'm not very patient, waiting to hear the bad news, and the longer they're here the more anxious I get.  And two, I should have thought more about drinking all that coffee this morning.  I didn't consider that my water would be off for the duration of this process, and my teeth are beginning to float.

So far what I know is that I have three sewer line leaks.  Those alone are going to run me about $5000.00 to repair, and will involve losing about 4 tiles out of the master bath floor for one of them.  The other two they can go through the floor under carpeting.  Luckily, no damage to my wood floors is planned so far.  

Right now they're working on the water lines.  The guys who did my plumbing checks said I have both water and sewer line leaks, so I imagine they'll find more leaks to fix.   Can you say, sucky inspection?  Oh.  I've said that before, haven't I?

The picture today is of the wandering jew I'm growing.  This is the plant that I started when I picked up two ragged pieces of it off the floor of Lowe's and put them in dirt when I got home.  As you can see it's an easy plant to grow.  This one is getting out of hand though.  I think I'll probably take off these long runners and pot them in another pot.  Maybe hang them outside to grow.  

OMG.  NO water line leaks in the house!!!!  Apparently I had slow seeps in two of my toilets that caused the meter to register like water line leaks.  The plumbers replaced the washers in the toilet cutoffs and there are now no more leak indications in the house.  They did say that somewhere in my sprinkler system it's leaking a bit, but I can get sprinkler system people to come and find that sometime.  When the sprinkler system is shut off, the house shows no leaks at all now.

So they're gone now and after all that, it's still going to cost me roughly $5000.00 to fix the sewer leaks and it's going to be disruptive in my house.  But it's not worse than that and it could have been.  I'll just add replacing those four bathroom tiles to the home repairs that need to be done to repair the foundation-caused cracks.  I have tiles left from having that floor put in a year ago.  I'll just have to match the grout. 

And along the way today I learned how and where to shut off the water to my house should I ever need to, and how and where to shut off the water to my sprinkler system.  And I got leaking toilet washers replaced for free.  Or anyway, thrown in with the fee for locating the leaks. So not too bad of a day, all told.

I'm getting kind of used to spending thousands of dollars for work on this house every month now.   Maybe I should just continue on after I get the crack-etc work done and tackle a project each month.  Like new windows. And new blinds for the windows.  And sprinkler system repair. I'm sure I can find other projects too.

Anyway, that's it for today.  I'll let you know how the actual plumbing repairs go. 

Finally - October and new car pictures

I have to say, I'm glad to start a new month.  I just feel like things are going to look up now.

I finally took some pictures of the new car, so here it is.  This car is so fun to drive.  Although the car really doesn't like how I drive in heavy traffic.  I'm ending up talking to this car much more than I talked to my other cars, mostly reassuring it when it fusses at me (gives me collision warnings). "yes, I see that car", "yes, yes, I'll signal when I change lanes"  "Oh come on, I'm not that close!"  etc, etc.  I could turn the cameras off, but that wouldn't be nearly as fun.  And actually, the warnings are not because of the distance between me and the other car, they're because of the difference in our speeds.  So if I'm accelerating toward the car ahead of me in preparation for changing lanes to go around it, the warnings go off.  Or if another car crosses the road ahead of me, the warnings go off.  So it's mostly the difference in speed between us rather than the distance between us that sets it off.  The car is also very responsive and has lots of bells and whistles (which of course I don't play with while I'm driving).  It's just overall a pleasure to drive.

One thing has already looked up.  I thought I was going to have to call an electrician at the house, on top of everything else.  I went to put some drinks in the frig in the garage on Wednesday and it was dead!  As in, dark and hot.  And smelled like a dead refrigerator. I'm glad I really didn't have any food in there to speak of. I think for the most part it doesn't hurt beverages to get hot and then cold again.

Anyway, I figure the foundation guys probably did this. After investigating, it turns out it's not the frig, it's that circuit that is blown.  I tried flipping all my breakers, and nothing made it come back. So I plugged the frig into the house with an extension cord. Luckily the door into the garage mostly closed over the cord. I say the foundation guys did it because they had been using the outlet outside my front door the first day they were there. Then the second day they had their extension cord running through the bedroom window and told me that the outlet by the front door didn't work. I also noticed that day that the boxes next to the garage frig were pulled out, so they must have tried using that outlet in the garage when the one out front failed, before they went through the bedroom window to an outlet. In their defense, they may not have realized that frig was running before that circuit blew, and they did tell me the one in front was out.  I certainly never thought to check the frig. I just pushed those boxes back in place. So it was down from September 17th until October 3rd. 

Anyway, I was telling the frig story at work on Thursday and one of my friends asked if I had pushed all those GFCI buttons on the outlets in the house.  I looked at her with a completely blank expression, and she said, "you know, the red buttons on the outlets. In my house the circuits are linked funny, so when one blows in the garage, I push the red button on the outlet in my guest bathroom to reset it."  I'll be damned. I never even thought about what those red buttons are for. So when I got home I went looking, and sure enough, the outlet that the frig was plugged into in the garage has one of those GFCI buttons! I pushed it, and everything is back to working normally. I owe my friend so big time. She saved me from paying for a electrician service call and looking like a fool. So not having to call an electrician is a serious mark in the positive column for the month.  

And another positive:  I got an email from the head guy at the foundation company to call him regarding the plumbing check results.  I figured he wanted to tell me that I should fix the leaks or they could cause future foundation problems, or that their company wasn't liable for them.  So when I called him, I started out assuring him that I would get the leaks fixed, etc, etc.  He said, "all that's fine, but not why I wanted you to call."  He told me that most plumbing companies in this area charge $300 per foot of tunneling if they have to tunnel to fix leaks.  He said if they have to tunnel to fix my leaks, to call him.  He and his guys would come and do the tunneling for $150 per foot.  I was really amazed.  It's not like these guys are not busy and just need extra work.  And they didn't have to offer this at all.  So I appreciate the offer and will take him up on it if I need to.  Yes, $150/foot is expensive, but it's half what the plumbers will charge me.  

So a few things are moving my way.  Now if they can find the leaks easily this coming week and it doesn't cost me a fortune to have them fixed, I'll know my luck has finally turned.