Moving proceeds apace; much thanks to Keith, John and Ben who have been helping us out since last Wednesday. We've got all the big stuff moved excepting my work bench (with all my reloading gear clamped to it of course) and a few shelf units.
We spent our first night here last Thursday, and all was well. The house is great, the kids love it, Mel loves it, I love it.
There is just one problem, we have no heat. Oh we have a working furnace, and we HAD heat, on Wednesday, Thrusday, and most of Friday.
But since then it has been quite cold.
Oh and we have no hot water either.
The reason for this?
Well, on tuesday I called the gas company to get the gas account transferred to my name, and the gas turned on. They said that the gas was turned off, and that they couldn't send someone back out to turn it on until Wed. the 22nd.
Only the gas wasn't actually turned off. While we were moving, the gas man came by to turn it off; saw that we were here, and said "well, why make two trips if you're already moved in, I'll just read the meter, note the transfer, and you should be all set".
Which he apparently did, on Wednesday.
Unfortunately, this seems to have left the gas shutoff workorder open, so some time late friday afternoon while we were out, some other enterprising soul came and turned our gas off. We discovered this early Saturday morning when it got down to 45 inside the house. Yes this IS Phoenix, but it's still February. Added to this of course is the lack of hot water, the moving which has made us both stiff and smelly... yeah fun.
The gas company was closed of course, and only responds to "gas emergencies" of which mistakenly shut off gas is not one. Even better, they are also off today for the holiday. The earliest our gas will be turned on is tomorrow, and I'm guessing it wont get done until the date on the original turn on workorder, that being Wednesday.
Thankfully we were well provided with thick blankets, and a thick pillowtop mattress pad, so Mel and I were all cozy comfy. The kids were at grandmas for the weekend, and the house got up to 65 during the day, but they came back last night, and we had to resort to putting a fan in front of the running oven (electric) to get some heat into the house. We of course shut that down before going to sleep (fire danger being what it is, especially at 38% relative humidity), and again woke up to a 49 degree house.
Even better, both kids have some major colds right now; which are not being helped by this. It's either have the oven on with exposed heating elements and fan with kids running around the house; or have said kids freeze their little tukus's off.
Thankfully they know not to go near a hot stove.
At this point ... actually for the last two days... I have been seriously considering jsut dremeling the lock off the meter and turning it on myself. It's not like it's unsafe, and if they lose a lock because of their screw up, so what. A pox be upon their hosue for freezing my family anyway. Mel however is paranoid that they'll permanently turn our gas off and refuse to supply us, or give us some huge fine or something.
Aahhh the joys of the home eh.
And the moving continues...
