Remember that story I never finished about my basement flooding? Well, it happened again. I don’t know if I even mentioned what caused the flood last time, but it ended up that the wiring in our house isn’t well done. I don’t know the details, but the ground fault interrupter or something, which is a safety switch that turns off the power to certain appliances if the circuit overloads, isn’t set up right. So what happens is that if the circuit overloads, everything plugged into a GFCI outlet loses power.
Well, it’s an easy enough fix if you know that the circuit has shut off, so after last year we didn’t think it’d be a big deal. If you see that the GFCI overloads, you just push the reset button on one of the outlets, and you’re all set to go. Also we had lived here for two years prior to the flood with no problems, so we figured it was probably a fluke thing. Obviously we were wrong on all counts, as it happened again last week. It was raining pretty hard at the time, and Jessica had just seen that the circuit was still working because we’ve got a night light plugged into one of the GFCI outlets to let us know they’re functional. Ten minutes later, water was seeping through the carpet in the basement.
Another reason we didn’t get the wiring fixed last year was that the electrician that came out told us it would cost several thousand dollars to fix. Seeing as how we had just spent a healthy sum on drying out the basement, such an investment just wasn’t feasible at the time. With this happening, however, we decided to just bite the bullet and get the stupid thing fixed. Well, another electrician came out today (different guy, same company) and gave us an estimate: $320. So needless to say, we’re pretty pleased that there’s one zero fewer than was expected. Now once we take care of however much it’ll cost to get the basement dried out again (it wasn’t nearly as bad this time, so it shouldn’t be too ridiculous), hopefully we’ll be done spending money on fixing water damage in the house.
So anyway, here I am posting again. I won’t make lame excuses, because they’re lame. I’ve just let myself get busy and bogged down again with work, and blogging took a backseat to everything else – even though I seriously would think about it almost daily. I would constantly think, “I’ve got to blog about this,” or “I’ve got to post that picture.” Alas, I never did either of those things. So hopefully in the next little while I’ll be able to catch you up on some happenings. The kids are entertaining (and/or maddening) as ever, so there’s plenty of stories and whatnot to talk about. I’ll be back soon. Hey, if Matt could revitalize his blog, why can’t I?
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