Pursuant to our vapor-provisioning crisis, I had dinner with my folks and one couple of my aunts and uncles tonight. My uncle’s career was in welding, specifically as a pipefitter, and worked on the Alaska Pipeline back in the seventies. As soon as he heard my tale of gas-pipe woes, he first asked me a bunch of technical questions that, of course, I could not answer as I was unfamiliar with the terminology. Then he said, “It’s probably a good thing you had all that taken care of. Slow leaks like that can lead to gas pockets in the house that can blow a structure completely off the foundation slab.”

I suppose I knew this and all, but when a man who spent fifty years building pipe-based mechanisms for transporting flammable material over long distances tells you this, you hear it.

As an aside, I caught a really interesting American Experience a couple weeks ago which was about the construction of the Pipeline. My uncle tells me that he knew three of the guys that were interviewed for the show, and that he felt it accurately captured his experience on the project. I was glad to hear it, because watching the documentary had made me proud of my uncle.

As we returned from my parents’ one-night hotel room around the corner, we saw a PSE van pull up, and – oh happy day – hhe restored our gas services.

Two-thousand-odd dollars later, a more responsive HVAC company has identified and repaired no less than five additional leaks in our internal gas piping. Puget Sound Energy, of course, can’t be here until tomorrow. While I’m pleased that the gas infrastructure now hold water, I’m a little peeved that my wallet has been relieved of that unsightly bloat.

Per Jon’s suggestion, the bathing strike plan is in effect.

I actually made a gas company phone person cry last night after she had told me there was no way for them to come out to turn the gas on (we got the repair done and it’s kinda cold). After she told me that it wasn’t possible for them to come out I pretended I was getting a hacksaw out of my toolbox as I rummaged around in the silverware drawer. I told her I was going out to the gas meter to hacksaw the gas company’s lock off the feedpipe. Then I told her I was reporting a gas leak and that would she please send someone.

She told me that she didn’t beleive me so I made more sawing noises.

In the end she told me that we needed a certificate of inspection from the plumber that did the work, something that the plumber evidently did not know, as he was puzzled why our insurance company would send him out on a gas line job.

So currently we have a new pipe but no gas to the house still. Viv is trying to get the city inspector to come out and certify it. It strikes me that the inspector can’t actually verify it unless there’s gas in the pipe, and that the gas company has told us they won’t turn the gas on until the pipework has been verified.

I did apologize to the poor woman, by the way, and I did not curse or speak impolitely to her. I still feel bad about it.

Yesterday Viv and I smelled gas in the house and called Puget Sound Energy to check for the source. The technician found a leak in a pipe that appears to lead to the kitchen. PSE then cut our gas at the meter until the leak is repaired.

We called an insurance carrier we’ve used for house issues in the past and they referred a plumber. Unfortunately, they were no-shows all day yesterday and expressed confusion over why they were called as opposed to a furnace shop when we contacted them.

It’s cold in the house without heat this morning. I worked in the yard all day yesterday – I’m rather ripe.

Cold canned beans for dinner tonight as we shiver under ragged blankets tented over a can of Sterno loom.*

*Hyperbole.