Wednesday January 18, 2006

What I did on my Winter Vacation...

I know things go thump in the night... Someday I'll tell you the story of the raccoons who set up housekeeping in my crawl space late one night. But a few mornings ago, something went THUMP at about 9am. And I do mean THUMP! When I went outside to see what that loud noise was, I found myself staring at a forty-foot section of a eucalyptus tree that had just smashed into my house.

Now what is the reaction of any normal, tool loving guy whose idea of nirvana is to spend weekends happily wandering the aisles of the local Home Depot? CHAINSAW! You've got to admit, there aren't a lot of great opportunities to use one of these unless you're making a really bad B horror movie.

But just as I'm firing up the saw, my wife informs me that there's no water pressure. Tree falls, no water. Hmmm. 30 minutes later, it hits me...actually, I stepped in it. Two inches of water filling up my sunken front yard.

On a freak chance, a branch of the tree, two inches in diameter, got jammed into the ground and severed my water main some three feet underground. So I had a tree sticking in the front of my house and no running water.

Of course I tried to shut off the water main at the street. But the valve broke off in my hand. Murphy's Law in action, folks. There was nothing else to do but wait two hours for the water company to come and turn it off.

So, I got the water turned off, returned from the hardware store with the $1.39 piece of piping I needed to repair the broken pipe and quickly (four hours) fixed the submerged pipe. The bummer was the tree was still where I found it that morning. The day was gone. And I still hadn't gotten to use my chainsaw. All my fingers and appendages are still attached, but in the end, a very disappointing end to the New Year's break.