Christmas Surprises, and Happy New Year!

Hello, hello! I have been slacking off on my self imposed blogging duties lately. But I don't seem to be alone either.  With the holidays and such it's really easy to neglect being creative, chores, or anything that doesn't involve just sitting on the couch or shoveling food in your face.  I guess it's good that we all want to reinvent ourselves this time of year, I know I could use the motivation. Anyway I thought I'd fill you in with the goings on around here of late.

Rewind back to the week before Christmas if you will.  It's cold, the sun sets around 4 o'clock, and trying to get in and out of the mall (where I work) makes you want to gouge out your own eyeballs. This is usually the time that Matt and I are wrapping up 75% of our Christmas shopping. Yes, we are the worst last minute shoppers. If there is a deadline to meet you can bet we will wait to get everything done on that day. Now picture that it's Tuesday morning and you're about to get into the shower and get ready for work. I turned on the water and then left the bathroom to go play on my phone for a few minutes while the water heated up. Dooot dooo dooo, I stick my hand in the water to see if the temperature meets my standards (which is pretty hot, I like to look like a lobster when I get out) and oh, no! The water was icy cold. Ok, shut off the water. I head down to the basement to check the water heater, maybe the pilot light is out.

Nope! That is the picture I sent to Matt. I didn't even look at the pilot light, I knew what was wrong. Why did I know what was wrong? Well let me tell ya. Last spring when we had our little gas leak in the back yard we were chatting it up with our local utilities guy. After turning the gas back on he went to the basement to turn our pilot lights back on and noticed that our water heater was nearing the end of it's time of usefulness. It was about 11 years old and the bottom was starting to flake off, or something.  So while we had this knowledge in the back of our heads, we didn't really worry about it. I guess we figured it would go out more slowly, like half hot showers or something. So with no immediate deadline looming over us (read: last paragraph), a new hot water heater was not a priority.

So I begrudgingly went back upstairs to take the coldest (and shortest) shower ever and get ready for work. When Matt and I finally had a few minutes to talk he had already been on Lowes and Home Depots web sites to see what a new one would cost. Which wasn't too bad, if you have all your Christmas shopping done by Thanksgiving. If you've been paying attention you know that is not the case for us. That evening we sat down to figure out what we were going to do to get out of this dilemma. First thing was to call my dad. He pretty much knows everything. He's been in construction forever, built a whole house with my uncle when I was a kid, and rarely ever hires someone to do anything. When I was little he would tell me about everything he was doing (changing brake pads, oil, making gravy from scratch, how to do plumbing, etc.) and since I was a girl I did not care. Now I just have to laugh at myself because I only wish I could do half the stuff he can do. Anyway, I talked to him about the various water heaters available, bla bla bla. Then he says, "Well Nick, if I weren't in Nebraska right now I would just come and change that out for ya." (Yes, my dad calls me Nick. Actually my whole family calls me that. But don't start calling me that.) My response was to ask when he would be home, and if he would have time to come over and install a new water heater. Lucky for us, my parents are better prepared for Christmas than we are and he was able to install it on Thursday.

Oh, and this is what it looked like in front of Home Depot that morning when we bought our new water heater. About a foot of snow, and wearing a giant down coat and snow boots was a must. 

So, next time your 7 and your dad is trying to teach you about plumbing you should listen. Or always live within driving distance so your ever so knowledgeable dad can come rescue you and your grown man boyfriend from icy cold showers. I love you dad!