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June 10, 2002 - 3:16 p.m.

Everyone has waxed poetic about Jen and Alan's wedding this weekend.  No need to repeat all of that; it was lovely.



In the land of home repair, it is the 5 minute projects that are starting to instill the most fear into my heart.  It is one thing to enter into some homeowner's project knowing that you are going to create a mess, remove some drywall, become sweaty, curse at something, install something wrong, fix it and then be done with the job.  None of this is expected on a five minute job.

My five minute job for the weekend?  Tricia mentioned to me as we were getting ready to go to Jen's wedding, �Did you know that the outlet doesn't work in your guest bathroom?� "No, actually I did not.  Hmmm."  So she plugs her curlers in somewhere else and we continue on the morning rush to get to the wedding on time.

Sunday dawns bright and sunny.  I am in town, not traveling and I have the homeowners list.  Filled with small and annoying things, things I keep meaning to get to and things I have been putting off.  I figure that I will start small.  How bad can it be to replace an outlet.  At this point it be come relevant to mention to the reader that I loaned my multimeter to Mel last week.

Matt arrives � he seems to be my designated homeowners cohort in crime, he always manages to be around for the fun projects, (like installing a ceiling fan on an angled ceiling, sigh).  Find the circuit, pop it.  Remove the outlet, replace it.  This is going well.  Install the new outlet, throw the circuit � not working. Perhaps I installed the replacement wrong, check it �nope.  Tom calls, he is headed over to help with my telephony wiring project for the day.  He is brining a multimeter.  Somewhere in here Rags notes that the outlet in my bathroom do not work either.  (yes, that is right � we have been without power outlets in the bathroom for who knows how long)

Tom arrives with the multimeter.  No power getting to outlet.  We are about an hour into the 5 minutes now and tromping through the house with an outlet tester.  None of the outlets that are in bathrooms, or outside work.  At this time the panel cover comes of the breaker box downstairs.  I am not feeling happy thoughts about my ability to get many more tasks done on this wonderful sunny afternoon.  Rags is wisely off somewhere filing financial paperwork that has been breeding on the coffee table.

More outlet covers come off and more things are tested.  It seems that the whole circuit is kaput somewhere.  And none of this was the circuit I brought down at the beginning of all of this - lucky me it was dead dead.  I have getting 110 shock.  I have naked outlets all over the house.  Funny � where is the GFI for this string anyway.  It is bathroom outlets, there must be a GFI �You would think that in the combination of 4 bathrooms and 2 outside outlets they would put one somewhere.  The search begins in earnest.  Eventually Chuck finds the bloody thing � in the basement, in my shop, behind a freezer.  Real intuitive eh?  Might I mention that the GFI is the ONLY outlet on that circuit that is in the basement.  Blind man and a goat.  My basement was wired by a blind man and a goat.

After that the prospect of installing phone wire in the walls and cutting in outlet covers was so trivial it was funny.  It took time and a hole through some walls, but now I have a jack in my office (cheap original owners only had 1 installed on each floor) and no phone cord running through my bedroom.  Happy Kyna.  Kyna slept well.


Well at least Chuck accomplished useful things this weekend.  The living room is paperwork pruned and things are happily filed away.  What is it about a sunny weekend at home that makes you feel that your home must become neat as a pin and everything in its place.  Must be something to do with seeing it in daylight hours that aren't all spoken for.  Hmm, wonder when I will get to things like cleaning out the shop?  Eh, there is always next weekend?
 

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