This owning a house thing is sort of inconvenient. You can't just call your landlord. Our water heater has gone out; only thing I know how to do is flip the circuit breaker. It flips back with a spark. Oh, oh, that can't be good.

I google it up, and there in bright red letters are Electricity and Water don't mix!

I call an electrician, who tells me it sounds like a plumbing problem.

I call a plumber, who tells me it sounds like a electrical problem. I insist on getting some answer out of all my calling around, he tells me to take off the top plate and press the red button to reset.

I take off the top plate, and it's wet.

Game over. No way I'm pressing any electrical buttons with water around. I guess it's cold showers for awhile.

I think we're going to replace our tank with the 'tankless' type, which are a bit more expensive. Yes, it's a tankless job.

My wife has taken the little hidey hole under that stairs where the water heater is, and made a little 'Prayer Room." Sometimes she disappears and the house is silent, and I know she in there communing. So making a little more room makes sense.


A few weeks again, my wife heard a racket up on our roof. She goes out on the deck and there are dozens of ravens pulling up the staples out of the shingles on our roof! You can see the staples against the skyline. I'm hoping I can just go up and hammer them back in. We're still a couple of years from having to replace the roof.

Anybody heard of such a thing.

It's weird how many animal's misbehaving we seem to have. We're east of town, and I think in a fairly settled area (Williamson Park), but I've seen deer, and skunk, and rock chucks (many, many rock chucks) and squirrels and we have a couple crowds of quail and raven love the area. We've fought off woodpeckers and now it looks like ravens are out to get us.

The other day I found a roofing specialist flyer on my doornob. I figure the roofing company is training ravens to go out and dissassemble roofs. "And don't forget to leave one our flyers," the boss yells, as they fly off.