Despite waking up to impending chaos, I actually woke up lacking yesterday's grumpies. But the impending chaos was just that..

I was laying in bed this morning and was awaken by the sudden stop of the fan I keep on my side of the bed. I picked my head up and looked at my alarm clock, and it was off. I sat up to look outside, assuming we would be blanketed with snow or ice, and this was the cause of the electricity going off. Nope.. no snow or ice. So I got up and walked into the kitchen to find Richard standing there making coffee, and power working. Odd.

So we went about checking out what it was. The ceiling light in our bedroom worked, but none of the outlets. Further investigation showed that the ceiling light in the sunroom was also not working. Hmmm. Off to the basement went Richard to check the fuses. He reports that he did indeed find a blown fuse and replaced it, but still, the power was off in the outlets.

Since squirrels have been the bane of our existence lately, I cursed a little, knowing it was them. It had to be. The little shitters must have gone and chewed through a wire. We talked it over, and decided that after I finished taking the van in to have the brakes replaced, we'd go up into the attic crawlspaces and investigate. Off I went to get ready for the 11AM appointment, getting my knitting ready so I'd have something to do while I waited, finished packing up packages that needed to go to the post office. Then.. upon opening the door to the sun room to go out to the van.. SMOKE.. BURNING SMELL.. PANIC! I run to call 911, Richard runs to the basement to shut down the electricals. Throw coats on kids, scurry them to the van, and by that time, lots of City of Syracuse firemen are running up my driveway. With them they carry hoses, ladders, pick axes, fire extinguishers. All I could do was just pace in my driveway, thinking the house was about to go up in flames.

Well...

Turns out that the fuse that Richard found that was blown, magically turns on the baseboard heaters in the sun room which we never use (all this time we thought they just didn't work at all). A rubbermaid bin that was pushed up against the baseboard heater was melting and nearly catching fire. THANK GOODNESS this happened during the day when.someone.was.home.

So, once the firemen are gone, I now have 15 minutes to make it to the van appointment. No biggie, right? Brakes, rotors, not the ideal time for these to go, but we can manage this. Turns out, not only are we requiring brakes and rotors, but the rear drum brakes are frozen up solid and need to be replaced (400 bucks additional!) The sway bar joint or something or other on the front drivers side, gone - another 200 bucks. The transmission fluid needs to be flushed - another 100 bucks. Oh, and the icing on the cake - "Ma'am, did you realize your state inspection expired 6 months ago?" NO, I insisted, the sticker says July 2007, to which he replies "honey, thats your registration"... All I can think is - FUCK! (I need to mention at this point of the story, Wisconsin does not have registration STICKERS on the front window, they go on the plate, and there are NO vehicle inspections - I mistakenly assumed that "7-07" was the inspection) Needless to say, I budgeted front brakes and rotors, so thats all that was fixed. We'll have to deal with the rest at some point, but today was out of the question.

Homeward bound again, so we can investigate the mysterious electricity outage, where we used the voltage detector thingie in the basement and found no power whatsoever going to the back of the house. ODD. Go back to the fuse box and Richard swaps out the fuse for the bedrooms despite it showing no signs of being blown with another and badabing... we have power again.
Bleh! Anyway, the moral of this story... don't waste your grumpiness on a day when you have nothing to be grumpy about!  Oh, and "sorry nastly little furry squirrels, you escape judgment this time - this time only"

Around a year ago on this day..

• PSA for my local democratic peeps - 2008
• The Winter Blahs - 2008
• Moving Along - 2006