Keeping Score

Fate Accomplis

Lately I've been wanting to work somehow, someway, on my old Cut to the Chase show I storyboarded and started animating on when I worked at Startoons.

So on the way home, I listened to the long radio edit of the song I was going to use. After we put Riley to bed, I came upstairs, and (woo-hoo!) found the instrumental edit that Phil and I came up with of said song, and ripped it in iTunes. Side note of comedy: iTunes just decided to randomly name every track a different Russian song or something. I actually had to note that each song ran exactly 1:56 (we had recorded it on the audio CD 37 times so I didn't have to use a repeat function to play it) because I thought maybe someone had played a practical joke on me.

Wow, I had forgotten just how much better our fast edit sounded! I listened to it over and over and over again, and decided that I had procrastinated long enough. I was going to finally find my storyboards for it and start anew, scanning them tonight to make an animatic reel!

Where did I put those storyboards again? Oh, that's right, I think I saw them in a box in the basement last. I'll just head down there, and...wait, what's that sound?

HOLY FUCKING SHIT THE WATER HEATER'S LEAKING ALL OVER THE FUCKING PLACE THAT'S A GOD DAMN GEYESER WHAT DO I DO WHAT DO I DO OH FUCK PANIC PANIC PANIC.

10:05pm

Okay, found the storyboards. They were upstairs in the PC room/office the whole time. Thank you fate, for making me think they were in the basement.

Also, bonus money: the shutoff valve for the hot water didn't work! Bad gate! Had to shut off the water to the whole house! Need to find plumber/repair dude fast! Only 3 toilet flushes left! Need to use the toilet AND have an uncontrollable thirst! Faint gas smell from gas shutoff valve! Begin panicking that whole house will become aloft on a giant fireball sometime tonight!

10:15pm

Hey, 24/7/365 assholes who advertise in the phone book, it's only 24/7/365 if, y'know, YOU PICK UP THE FUCKING PHONE OR CAN MAKE IT OUT TO MY HOUSE SOMETIME BEFORE NOON TOMORROW. No extra charge for night/weekend hours? THAT'S PROBABLY BECAUSE YOU DON'T COME OUT AT NIGHT, WHEN I FUCKING NEED YOU TO FIX MY WATER HEATER.

10:30pm

Okay, Aqua Teen Hunger Plumbing*, you are rock gods. Your "I'll have Ken there in an hour or two tops" makes you the winning bidder! Actually, it makes you the only guy who answered the phone who still was able to come out tonight!

11:15pm

That was only 45 minutes and you're already in my driveway! You guys are my new heroes! What do you mean it's going to cost $1086 to fix everything (thank you $186 faulty shut-off valve!)? Hey, guess what? I have to pay it if I want water, don't I! Woo-hoo midnight plumbing is fun!

11:30pm

Okay, ever notice that "metallic and oil" smell you get on your hands when handling pipes? Plumbers smell like that. From ten feet away.

Time estimate to completely replace the shut-off valve and a 50 gallon water heater: an hour to an hour and a half. Estimated time for me to have done it myself: are you fucking kidding me? It takes me four hours just to replace a faucet, vanity, and drain pipe for a bathroom. I would have imploded just from the stress of trying to figure out which hot water heater to buy, not to mention figuring out how to get a thing that huge in the back of a Honda Civic hatchback with a child seat still installed, let alone how to solder (sp?) the fucking pipes back together.

12:00pm. Or is that am? I think it's am.

Y'know what? Our smoke alarms are interconnected! If say, just hypothetically speaking, for instance, that your plumber was working on your hot water heater, and he had to "sweat" the pipes to get them to come apart, and wound up making a tiny bit of smoke and that found its way into the smoke alarm located not 2 feet away, what would happen is that that little smoke alarm downstairs will send a signal to ALL of the smoke alarms in the house. That's right, including the one RIGHT THERE IN THE HALLWAY NEXT TO THE BABY'S ROOM.

Neat!

12:30pmam

Hey, did you know that most water heaters only have a six year warranty on them? Our last one had a six year warranty on it. Guess what year it was installed? 1998. Hooray! It's just expired! How fortuitous for us!

Oh, wait.

1:25am

Yay, the job be completeth, and I tire from the long and stressful day, yearning for the new matress and box spring we just purchased last week for, you guessed it, $1,000.

I'm going to pretend not to notice the shimmying in my front end tomorrow on the drive into work, even though it's been getting hard not to notice, because if I take it into the shop, you just know it's going to cost another thousand fucking dollars.

As god as my witness, I will never jokingly complain about Target being the "hundred dollar store," because y'know what? After this week, a hundred bucks is a cool summer breeze compared to this string of 1G ass-gouging.

* It's really Aqua Tech something Plumbing, but hey, it works.