Category Archives: 725

Hot City Inspector or Hot Water? Neither

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I woke from a dream at four a.m. this morning:

The City of Houston plumbing inspector had been a woman, it was her last inspection of the day, and after inspecting the gas line, she started hitting on me. We ended up scheduled to have dinner at her place.

I also noted that the caps on the floor jets were flush with the floor and resembled man hole covers. [The actual caps jut out of the floor.]

About 7:30 a.m. the plumbers called me to inform me the inspector would be coming today, between 8 and noon.  I would be at work, so no hot-to-trot plumbing inspector for me.  The Roommate on the other hand got home at 4 a.m., and if he didn’t wake up when the inspector showed I would be none to happy.

I decided to go for a morning walk and upon returning saw the plumber’s van sitting in front of the house.   He had just woken The Roommate to provide him the same information I had received on the phone.   Fine – it meant I didn’t have to.

The inspector came several hours later, and gave the work a green tag, but asking that we paint the PVC emergency drain pipe.   It’s a bit ugly and that’s no large task.

One step closer to hot water.

Day 29: Tree-free Garage

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I finally synchronized a borrowed chain-saw, electricity (for the electric chain saw), free time, and daylight to allow me to climb onto the roof of the garage and cut off the two main trunks of elm that were still up there.

Quite a bit of physical exertion was required, though it only took about an hour. There were a few precarious moments, not knowing when and how the main trunk would fall or roll.

Now that the roof is clear, a few spots of minor damage are evident. I’ll need to get up there and patch a few places sometime soon.

At&t Is Oblivious

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18 days after the storm and I get the runaround or the cover-my-ass questions from the AT&T reps.

“you only contacted us this morning for the first time?”

Since I’ve been without power for 14 days and couldn’t confirm their outage, they will want me to pay.

And on top of that they have NO IDEA what the status of the network is. Wendy, a very cordial girl who asked about the weather “there aren’t any hurricanes around are there?”, told me to call back in another four hours. It’s the standard response. “Call back at 3:15am”, she actually said to me!

There’s no f-ing way it’s going to be fixed at that time or that anyone will know what’s going on at that time. If I happen to wake in the middle of the night, I may call them out of hatred. And in honor of squeeky wheels.

Day 11 – No Power

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Hasn’t been too hot to effect sleeping.

Not having electricity means waking up whenever, but that’s life.

CenterPoint has the 77007 zip code estimated as 21% outage still.  They had previously estimated that we would be below 20% outtage by Thursday.  Yes, restoration has visibly slowed.

Saturday

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No electricity at the Continental Club, so I had a low key evening at Virginia’s watching The Empire Strikes Back. Headed home about 10:30.

It’s definitely getting warmer and more humid, but I got to sleep (listening to the collapse of the underregulated US banking system this week) and didn’t get out of bed until after 9.

The phone guy is here this morning. On the pole (which is broken at the top) testing the lines. Someone’s cutting some small brush from the house catty-corner.

This is the first time I’ve had all week to do any work during daylight, so that’s what I’ll be doing.

The Woods Food Store (previously Saver) is open without power … finally. The cashier said “it’s just weather” on Friday before the storm, and it took him over a week to reopen and no ice or generator. Welcome to the Gulf Coast sir.

Wednesday

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Came home from work to find neighbor Kathy and some friends finalizing the clearing of her debris. After chainsawing my Red Bud, they forced me to head out to The Tavern on Gray. It’s been open for days and tonight is Steak Night. We ate, and it was very good!

The place was packed, a duo of acoustic guitar gave the 281/Bourbon Street feel to the evening.

Nicole at work was right when she said this whole week is like Saturday night because no one is working.

…, Cher, Johnny Cash, ZZTop, accoustica, Eric Clapton, (break) … Van Morrison

It was very Dive Bar New Orleans.