Minor Annoyances

Minor Annoyance #1 - I'm not sure why, but lately somebody has sporadically been stealing my newspapers.  It's not a huge problem, but I don't know what has caused this minor 'spree'.  My personal opinion is that it's some cheapskate who is checking the Powerball results.  That's because it's happened on two successive Mondays and once on a Thursday.  These are the days after the Powerball drawings.  The dumb thing is - the thief doesn't have to steal my paper to find the results.  They could go online and check.  Or they could go to the library and read the free copy of the paper.  Or they could watch the actual live drawing on Sundays and Wednesdays.  In the meantime, I have to go through the annoyance of calling the paper and asking for another copy.  Which means some poor person has to drive out to my house and deliver another paper.  Not to mention the annoyance for the poor carrier who has done their job and then has to pony up the cost of the missing paper.

Minor Annoyance #2 - This morning I got up and walked into the bathroom.  At some point I 'woke up' enough to notice what looked like an odd little shadow on the floor by the vanity.  I looked closer and realized it wasn't a shadow, it was the remains of a damp spot.  Not good.  I thought about giving it a couple of days and seeing if it went any further.  Then it occurred to me that plumbing problems NEVER heal themselves.  They only get worse.  So I called a plumber that I've used in the past with good results.  I was expecting to be worked into their schedule in a day or two.  So I was pleasantly surprised when they said they could get somebody out today.  (Thereby saving me 24 to 48 hours of worrying.)  A nice young man showed up shortly after lunch and started looking around.  At first he couldn't find anything wrong.  The damp spot had mostly dried up and evidence of any other stray water wasn't to be found.  At first.  After looking at all the obvious places, he pulled the grate off the crawl space under the closet that holds my water heater and furnace and crawled on in.  Shortly thereafter, he found the problem.  At one of the points on a T-connection, the seal was beginning to give up the ghost.  There are a couple of possible reasons for this.  One could just be old age.  The other was the freezing of my pipes during February's cold weather.  (They froze but didn't burst.)  I'm thinking that water swells a bit when it freezes.  Maybe the slight swelling inside the pipe was just enough to loosen the seal at the joint.  In any case, the plumber was able to fix the problem and I should now be leak-free.  And the cat got some free entertainment by sneaking into the crawl space when I had my back turned and got to spend about 20 minutes investigating areas he's normally not able to access.

The good news is - since I am (to employ a euphemism) currently between jobs, I was free to meet with the plumber.  No hassles of taking off from work.  No scheduling pressures.  I could just wait for the plumber and keep track of the leak.

Papillon