Plan in place

Well, the plumber came out, dug around.

Determined that the leak was (where else would it be?) under the sidewalk.

Which makes it more difficult than just "throw a patch on that baby."

So I elected, considering that I'd have to pay to have the sidewalk torn up ANYWAY, and considering that the pipe is the old galvanized pipe - pipe that was probably laid* when the house was built - there's a decent chance it might break again somewhere else, if our drought continues, which, if I'm reading the predictions for La Nina right, it will.

*(Shout-out to any of my CPAAG or Dirty-Jobs fan peeps out there, if they're reading)

So I sighed, and asked the guy how much an entire new line to the house would cost.

It's over $1000, but not so much over that I can't imagine being able to pay for it. So I told him yeah, make it so. This is why I live below my means most of the time. This is why I have a savings account.

He's going to call the "Okie Dig" people, they'll come and mark the line so he can be sure there are no hidden gas or fiber optic cable lines or whatever. I know there WON'T be - that soil has probably not been disturbed since the house was built - and the gas is in the rear of the house (gas in the rear...another shout-out to the CPAAG people). But it still has to be checked.

Once that happens, he will call me, he will come out and trench and replace the line and it should not take that long. I don't have to be home except for at the very end when they re-connect and turn the water back on.

So it might happen tomorrow, it might happen Thursday.

I thought about taking out a room at one of the motels here (we have a couple new ones in town) but meh, I then realized:

a. It will probably cost close to $100 a night
b. The only thing I really will need a source of water at home for overnight or tomorrow is flushing the toilet. (I have bottled drinking water - despite the Bottled Water Is Evil And Destroying The Earth trope, I do think it's responsible to have an emergency supply of drinking water on hand, and I'm just not up to canning water in glass jars like some of the real survivalist-minded people I know do)
c. I could much more cheaply buy several five gallon buckets, fill them down at church (a few blocks from me) or from the spigot at a neighbor's (if they're home, and if they're agreeable) and do that. Like what anyone on a well with a pump does when the power goes out for any length of time.

(If things go as I hope they should, the water should be back on no later than Thursday. If it gets long enough that the cleanliness of my hair or my person in general - again, I can use bottled water for the really necessary cleaning - then I'll cross that bridge when I come to it and either shell out for a hotel room, or see what the facilities are like at the campus gym. Or heck, if it's mainly my hair cleanliness I'm worried about, I might just shell out for a shampoo at one of the local salons. As a treat for going through this.)

So, I don't know. I'm not happy about it but it could be a lot worse. The biggest thing is that I won't have to be home while the guy is cutting up my front yard with a Ditch Witch - both because of the noise involved, and because tomorrow is my busiest teaching day.

I wound up getting lunch from the local bbq place. Not entirely sure what to do for dinner but I do have paper plates, and anything I need to wash (like salad greens), I could use bottled water for.

I'm telling myself it will be like camping, except without bugs and with climate control...