Day 2346

I'm convinced that waiting for service technicians must be one of the circles of hell in Dante's Inferno. No matter when you schedule things, the repair people are never on time, and when they do finally arrive, the part you need the most isn't ever on the truck. I thought today's plumbing repair was going to be a simple job, but I should have known better. When the plumber finally arrived, he took a quick look at the leaking faucets and told me that simply replacing the washers wasn't going to work. The fixtures had corroded so badly that he recommended replacing the entire assembly. I thought the plumber would go and pick up the parts himself, but he suggested that it would be better if I do it. "I'll probably pick up something you hate," said the plumber, "and even if I do find the right parts, I'll have to mark them up 40%. OK. You convinced me. I drove down to the plumbing supply store and looked at the faucets he recommended. I didn't like either of them. I took one of the handles from the old faucets with me and the owner of the store recognized it and said he had all the parts to completely rebuild my current faucet. This seemed like a better solution to me, since the newer faucets didn't look like they would fit anyway. I bought $90 worth of faucet parts and returned home to reschedule another appointment with the plumber. The dispatcher told me that someone could come out again toward the end of the day, which sounded much better than waiting until Friday. I waited and waited, but the plumber never showed up.

When you are waiting for a repair person, you can't run to the bank, or walk the dogs, or even take a shower, because that's always when the repair guys will arrive. If you cancel everything and wait patiently, they will never show up. If you figure that they're going to be late anyway and decide to run a quick errand, they'll be in your driveway in ten minutes. At any rate I have all the parts now.  The next step is to get another plumber to come out and tell me that I bought the wrong parts.We'll have to go through all the barking again too. The first thing that Dot did when she saw the plumber this morning was poop all over the place.

The sink will eventually get fixed, but I'm betting that something else will go wrong before the job is finished. At least I had something to do while I waited today. Since I wasn't able to leave the house for a large part of the day, I was able to complete one of my increasingly rare writing assignments. Hopefully, I'll have another assignment when the plumber returns. It will help to pay the plumbing bill.

The weather forecast has been wrong almost every day this week. It was supposed to rain today, but the weather was actually pretty nice.  Dot did well on her short walk this morning. I think a week of reduced activity is helping her.  I could use a week of reduced activity myself. I'm perpetually tired these days. Maybe tomorrow will be my day of rest. There certainly isn't much else on the schedule at this point.

Susie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day