A good (and not-so-good) Friday
Apr. 19th, 2014 12:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rscIt was past time to plant the peas and the lettuce (way later than usual because Italy), plus Burpee had surprised me by sending a bunch of plants in early April rather than (as I expected) early- to mid-May, and the weekend is booked in various ways, so despite the fact that it was still kind of cold, we made a pilgrimage to Gloucester yesterday.
Except... I realized too late on Thursday that I had neglected to get the water turned on, and then![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jwg suddenly wasn't sure if we'd left the valve in the basement closed (we always do, so I don't why we thought we might not have)... Anyway, the upshot was that we decided to go up anyway and make sure the valve was closed (it was), and call the water department to find out if, by chance, they could actually get to us the same day. I kind of assumed they wouldn't, so I decided not to bring the seeds and plants.
The receptionist at the water department was doubtful, but said there was a crew in the area, so maybe... so I decided to go ahead and start taking winter mulch off the strawberries and assorted perennials, when lo and behold the water dept. guy showed up and turned the water on. Should have brought the seeds (but probably not the plants, considering the temperature). Oh, well.
Turning on the water in the house is sometimes uneventful, sometimes an adventure. This year, the pressure in the cold faucet in the upstairs sink, which is often a problem, was really unacceptable, so John, with some difficulty and discomfort, managed to get into the pipe and extract the two screws that had fallen into it and eventually got it put back together so that is has the same (somewhat feeble) pressure as last year. I say it's finally time (way past time, actually) to replace that sink, without turning it into a complete bathroom redo. I might actually convince him.
So then it was time to turn on the hot water and fill and start the heater. Only, once the heater was mostly filled, we found that water was pouring onto the basement floor (which is dirt, fortunately, so not much mess); apparently the heater has finally rusted through somewhere high up on the tank. Well, it's something like 25 years old, and we had been talking about replacing it anyway. This will be a bit complicated, because modern gas heaters have electronic ignition rather than pilot lights, so we'll need to do something about electricity as well as plumbing, so it might be a couple of weeks before we can have hot water. It's OK, we're not living there yet.
Because of the lack of hot water, we didn't bother opening the valve to the washing machine, so we don't know yet if the precautions we took to avert the kind of disaster we had last year (water left in the washer's intake valve, freeze, break, flood) were successful.
Anyway, I did finish removing the winter mulch (remember that?).
Now we need to get up there sometime soon -- probably Monday or Tuesday -- and plant the peas and lettuce and the new plants.
Then last night was our first Red Sox game of the season, which should have been fun. But when the temperature is in the high 30s, one would just as soon not have the game run nearly 3½ hours, and yeah, it would have been nice if the Sox had won. Well, there will be others, probably warmer, and hopefully with better outcomes.
Except... I realized too late on Thursday that I had neglected to get the water turned on, and then
jwg suddenly wasn't sure if we'd left the valve in the basement closed (we always do, so I don't why we thought we might not have)... Anyway, the upshot was that we decided to go up anyway and make sure the valve was closed (it was), and call the water department to find out if, by chance, they could actually get to us the same day. I kind of assumed they wouldn't, so I decided not to bring the seeds and plants.The receptionist at the water department was doubtful, but said there was a crew in the area, so maybe... so I decided to go ahead and start taking winter mulch off the strawberries and assorted perennials, when lo and behold the water dept. guy showed up and turned the water on. Should have brought the seeds (but probably not the plants, considering the temperature). Oh, well.
Turning on the water in the house is sometimes uneventful, sometimes an adventure. This year, the pressure in the cold faucet in the upstairs sink, which is often a problem, was really unacceptable, so John, with some difficulty and discomfort, managed to get into the pipe and extract the two screws that had fallen into it and eventually got it put back together so that is has the same (somewhat feeble) pressure as last year. I say it's finally time (way past time, actually) to replace that sink, without turning it into a complete bathroom redo. I might actually convince him.
So then it was time to turn on the hot water and fill and start the heater. Only, once the heater was mostly filled, we found that water was pouring onto the basement floor (which is dirt, fortunately, so not much mess); apparently the heater has finally rusted through somewhere high up on the tank. Well, it's something like 25 years old, and we had been talking about replacing it anyway. This will be a bit complicated, because modern gas heaters have electronic ignition rather than pilot lights, so we'll need to do something about electricity as well as plumbing, so it might be a couple of weeks before we can have hot water. It's OK, we're not living there yet.
Because of the lack of hot water, we didn't bother opening the valve to the washing machine, so we don't know yet if the precautions we took to avert the kind of disaster we had last year (water left in the washer's intake valve, freeze, break, flood) were successful.
Anyway, I did finish removing the winter mulch (remember that?).
Now we need to get up there sometime soon -- probably Monday or Tuesday -- and plant the peas and lettuce and the new plants.
Then last night was our first Red Sox game of the season, which should have been fun. But when the temperature is in the high 30s, one would just as soon not have the game run nearly 3½ hours, and yeah, it would have been nice if the Sox had won. Well, there will be others, probably warmer, and hopefully with better outcomes.
