Saturday evening went tothe movies, saw The Mummy one, ok, mybe a 6.5 out of ten. I hate those “super-speed” scenes where everything is so speeded up your mind has a hard time comprehending the details. (Guess in today’s world of cinema the idea is to just “get the jist” of what’s happening!)
Anyway I digress, got home and went to wash up and just couldn’t get the water any hotter than warm. Finished out and came out and said to the wife, “Hey, have you been running the hot watera lot today?” To which she replies, as she does to every question, “Why?” (Why do women do that, it is annoying, if I knew all the why’s I’d not ask a question would I?) “Because there is virtually none coming out of the faucet, even when I let it run. I’m going to check the hot water heater.”
So I go and check. We are prone to a lot of thunder and lightning storms here this time of year and it takes nothing to kick the electricity off, then on again, but sometimes it trips a circuit breaker, so maybe the storm we had Saturday morning tripped the hot water heater, thinks me. I check it, flip it off, and then on again, nothing. Oh well, can’t do anything about it at 10pm on a Saturday night. (Well I could call a plumber, but he’d charge at least the amount of the national debt to even come out and look at it on Saturday night, and no matter what he’d say something like, “Hmmm, hard to tell, I’ll come back in the morning and we can really check it out.” Then they come back on Sunday, no less, and charge me the rest of the national debt of all the third world countries in Africa! We will not die without hot water for a day or so. Decision made, end of case.)
The wife runs in of course and takes a “quick shower”, (quick enough to drain every precious luke warm drop of water left in the tank!) I decide I’ll follow and jump in and “Holy Shit!! I forgot water could get that cold without refrigeration. Anyway the wife comes back in and says, “The water heater is making funny noises.” So I patter out to the garage in my flip flops with just my shorts on, and sure enough I’m witnessing the final death throes of the water heater, it’s groaning, wheezing, bubbling, …who said this thing is not alive? It’s just been living quietly in the corner of the garage faithfully putting hot water at our disposal, (I’m getting a little misty!)
So in the morning we go to church, my wife opts to stay and sing with the choir at the next mass as well, and I head out to the Home Depot Superstore. I rationalized two trips by a plumber, $250, another trip to get a bunch of parts, i.e. elements, whatjamacallits, etc, $150, and maybe it works for a while more,…priceless! Screw it, I’m just going to get a new hot water heater and call the plumber Monday to come and install it, end of problem, new six year warrantee, life is good.(And I can shave in hot water again.)
So I get one and drag it home, $249 and I took the six year warantee, and declined the additional three for “only $100 more”. “Look Mr. Orange dirty apron clerk, if the company that makes it is willing to say they warantee it for six years, don’t you think they know they’d lose thier ass if they gave everyone another three years on top of that? Of course, it’s planned obsolesence, that extra $100 is almost half of another brand new one,….no extra three years, I’ll tough it out.”
So here I am 6:30am, faithfully writing about this, waiting til 8am to call a plumber, telephone book right here beside me, I’ll set it up then off to work, my wife is here all day, they can work out the details. (I cry when I have to write checks, that’s why 99% of my bills are on auto-draft.)
Speaking of Auto-draft, it’s the tame financial version of “Russian Roulette”, or Dominos, If I put in a check that bounces, the bank then bounces the checks drawn on my account and everyone gets clipped $30 a pop! Oh well, better than there being one in the chamber in the real game I suppose.
Well gotta go shower,shave, and play “Dialing for Dollars” with the plumbing industry.
I may not write tomorrow because I’m taking a lounge chair ito the shower and put on some tunes and lay under hot water for hours and hours until I shrivel up like a damn prune!
-30-
The Emerald Rose 
When you become President you will have the White House maintenance to worry about stuff like that.
We had to do the same thing with our refrigerator last Thursday. It seems the frig was off for several days before I realized my diet coke wasn’t cold. The freezer had melted ice-cream and those colored icy thingies for the grandkids, and brown hamburger meat. So the damn things cost us plenty when you consider the cost of the lost food and the replacement ‘stuff.’ But the beer was good, anyway.
By: coffeypot on August 4, 2008
at 1:23 pm