Anyone know what this is?

After my class today, we had a nice presentation by a small group of students on advertising, one stood stuck around a little longer than usual. We talked about interviewing and resumes for two hours.

I’ve come to conclusion that the most rewarding moments of teaching aren’t in the traditional classroom environment.

So I’m packing up my things for the night and find I have a voicemail. A friend’s in-laws are in need. It seems they’ve had a catastrophic pipe failure that will require re-doing a room. And they’ll need tile. Lot’s of it. The local Lowe’s only has so much, but others near me had more, so I was sent on a mission to buy them all out.

I could sympathize in emergency repair, so I found myself visiting three Lowe’s tonight — I had to pick up a new garage door opener for our house anyway, so really only two of the store visits were for someone else. The very patient people working at the front of each store called their tile-needing customer and let her pay over the phone. I must have $600 worth filling up my entire back seat.

Got home to a delicious turkey wrap from Amsterdam, and then loosened the two screws from the old garage door opener. Opened the new one, wrapped the wires around the contacts, tested my installation (A success!) and mounted it to the wall.

This home repair only cost me $8.

Now let’s review:

When we first moved in we broke the thermostat. That cost $50.

Then I broke the shower head trying to fix a drip. That led to a larger problem which required plumbers, a drywall saw and an acetylene torch. It should have cost us about $1400, the plumber said, since it was a weekend. Fortunately the house warrant and the new shower head stuff cost us around $100.

And then we woke up one weekend to find the frozen contents of our refrigerator hanging out in liquid form on the floor. That cost us $50 (thanks home warranty) plus whatever we paid for ice and dry ice to preserve our perishables.

(We’d been in the house for two months by then.)

Then, in October, the dishwasher broke. Fifty more bucks. (And our second in-house electrocution.)

Then it broke again in December. We had it repaired during the holidays. Yep, $50 more.

This list does not include the bird feeder or the cable/Internet problems.

January we had a month off from from fixing anything, but lately the garage door opener died. For a few days we’ve opened it the old fashioned way, with the remotes in the cars, but now we’re boldly living in the 21st century again.

On the other hand, we haven’t had to re-do a room because roots destroyed pipes and brought a sewer into our home. So there’s that.