Frustrations

So, my electric meter hasn't been registering anything.  At the beginning of the month, I called and let them know there was a problem.  The first time they sent someone out nothing happened.  Thursday, they sent someone out again.  I arrive home at 11:30 at night to discover my power is off.  Street light is working so I know it's not that the rain storm knocked out power.  I somehow manage to find the flashlight in the garage and head out to check the meter.  It's totally gone!  Now, I'm pissed off.  I know what has happened before I call - previous tenants had tampered with it to get electricity for free. I just know it.  I call customer service and wait for 45 minutes to speak to someone (clearly not many people working the overnight shift).  I'm willing to wait because I want to get someone to come out on Friday to fix this problem.  No such luck when I reached someone.  All she could tell me was that I had to call Revenue Assurance in the morning.  Alas, we got disconnected before she was able to give me the number.  I had to start the whole process all over again.  Finally got to go to bed at 12:45 - very upset and annoyed.

I set my alarm for 7:55 so I could call as soon as they opened at 8:00.  Did that and only got the chance to leave a message.  They would call me back by the end of the next service day.  That did little to quell my anger as there was no way I was going to wait until Monday to talk to someone about this problem.  I left a detailed message explaining the fact that I had called to report the problem so there was no way I was the one to have tampered with the meter.  It was quite obvious from my tone that they had a disgruntled customer on their hands.  As I was telling Mom ad Dad, I would have been significantly less pissed off had they left me a message on Thursday.  Apparently simple courtesies escape some people and businesses.

After leaving my message, I start getting myself ready for the day.  It's then that I discover that I have more to add to my frustrations.  The rain storm has shown me that I have a leak somewhere and it is evidencing itself in the bathroom.  Fortuitously, it's coming down right into the garbage can.  One more thing for us to work on.

Since we had no electricity, we chose to do work in the hallway that needed doing.  Mom finished cleaning the ceiling.  I scraped paint from the walls.  Mom and Dad have never seen paint behave this way in all their years of fixing up houses.  It's just coming off in sheets.  The end result:

Alas, I swept up the paint before I could take a picture.  They really were large sheets, not little chips.  While this was going on, Dad was working on that hole above the heater.  He added some cement board to try to insulate some of the heat from coming all the way through the wall.  We'll have to buy some 1/4" wallboard to finish the job.

We're thinking the heat from the furnace is what is causing the paint to peel away in large chunks.  It just does it for the top half of the board.  The bottom half of the wall has the paint stuck on well, like it should.

At 10:30 I get a call from Katie at the power company.  She's wonderful.  She clearly listened to my message.  First thing she tells me is that it was their fault.  I'm right about the fact that I called the problem in and that I should not have had my power cut off.  She's already called it in and someone will be out to replace my meter that day.  Thank goodness!  At 11:45, Kevin showed up and fixed it.  I now have a working meter and electricity. Yay!

After the paint chipping and cement board putting up, Dad and I rehung one of my kitchen cabinets to be 2" lower so that my antique cookie jar will fit in the display shelf the cabinet creates.  We then worked on finishing the living.  We got it mostly done when we discovered a chip (which would quickly grow significantly larger) in the end of a board that had already been placed.  It would require us to remove some boards to get to that one.  We decided that would be a good stopping point for the day.