Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Sometimes it's good to be in hot water...

Work continues on my new site. It should be going live at the end of this week. I have to say I am enjoying this immensely! Yesterday I did a phone interview with a musician I am a huge fan of. It’s really cool to speak with someone you admire in a business fashion, rather than the position of a gushing fan.

I’ll post here once the site goes live, and also have for time to devote to Kit Burns Was Framed! Thanks for your continued patience.

It was an interesting weekend. Saturday, I took a crew of my friends to my folks’ cottage on the other side of the state to do some landscaping. We drove for two and a half hours, shoveled stone and dirt for ten hours, then made the trek back.

I arrived home to a busted hot water heater.

I was exhausted and dirty, and couldn’t take a shower.

Stray Thoughts was with me, and I thank him for persevering as I did. He could have gone home and left me on my own, but he didn’t. He slept on my couch that night, and spent the next day helping me install a new hot water heater. It further entrenched me in the battlefield of filth and physical exhaustion, but it got done.

Monday morning I was able to take my first shower since Friday morning. It was one of the best showers I’ve ever had.

Even so, hot water heaters are a bummer in one sense; when your fridge goes, or your stove, at the end of the day you have a new stove or fridge to enjoy. A hot water heater just… makes more hot water. It’s not like this hot water is different than the previous.

In a way, the hot water heater is the unsung hero of the household. It sits in a corner of the basement, a happy little workhorse heating the water you need to keep yourself and your world clean. You don’t notice it until it’s gone.

Think about that the next time you shower. Thank that little happy worker hidden in the basement. And also take a moment to think of all the people in your life you never see and never notice, yet would shake your foundations if they weren’t around.

Next time you get a chance, say thanks to your mailman, your garbageman, or the guy who makes sure the beer cooler at the local liquor store is stocked. People like this are the hot water heaters in your life.

4 comments:

stray_thoughts said...

I'm not entirely sure but I think my mailman might be a total jerk...but I do appreciate my water heater...that furnace needs to stop looking at me cross though...

fineartist said...

Mine has been spewing and spitting and just generally being a pain in the arse for a week now.

Seems the thermostat was screwed up, so we’ve replaced it, but before being able to do that we killed lots of pvc. Pvc gets really hot and then brittle and then busts, for anyone’s information…repeatedly. We put in galvanized.

Now I need to replace the thing, it has seen it’s better days of heating water, and actually works far better as a frappin’ sprinkler, but first, I now need to replace the floor where it lives before I spring for a new heater and that’s going to have to wait for career ladder money. I know, more information than you needed.

Glad yours is new and heating the heck things, and I know what you mean about that being one of the best showers you ever took.

Off to hug my heater even if he did pee on my floor.

Angeline Rose Larimer said...

Just stopping in after a week's hiatus. Deep thoughts to be found here. I'm very glad our water heater was in working order when we returned.
As for the water heaters of our lives, indeed! Though, my mailman is also a jerk. A bit of a power tripper, but I totally get what you're saying.
Off to read more Alpharat!

Angeline Rose Larimer said...

p.s. You have really great friends!