At last. So, yeah - my weekend spun quickly into an ordeal around Saturday Noon - I’d smelled something odd in the basement, and being a cautious fellow, called the gas company to check it out. Well, the odor was actually sewer emanations coming up through the basement drains, because of water evaporation, and easily remedied. However, the gas-man found a leak in the gaslines big enough to require him to shut off my gas anyway. But not big enough to cause immediate danger or to allow me to smell it, mind you. He said that once I had it fixed, I could call the gas company, and they’d switch things back on.
So I call every plumber in the book. Most people use that phrase as a figure of speech. I’m not. I was ready to start trying people who’s last name was ‘Plummer’. I finally got hold of a Morgantown company that works on weekends. They tell me a plumber will call me. Saturday evening passes without further phone call or event. Sunday, I call them again. Finally, a plumber calls me back - the guys arrive, and spend five hours (at time and a half pay… wince) and essentially rebuild my interior gas lines.
Here’s the punchline. I call the gas company to get them to turn the gas back on (they’d apparently shut it off not only at the meter, but at the curb) and I am told that they can’t call someone out for that until Monday morning. Nevermind that it’s cold. Nevermind that I have neither heat nor hot water. Nevermind that the technician the day before had said that the company WOULD dispatch someone. None of that matters.
Finally, this morning, they sent someone, and it’s all back on. Still - it was a hellish weekend, all my plans to do things were dashed, and now I’m just glad things are back to normal.
In other news, over the weekend, a Harley-Davidson baseball cap appeared on one of the bushes in front of my house. I don’t know what possessed my shrubbery to make it decide it needed a jaunty chapeau, but there you go.