Tuesday: Still Spinning, but I Got a Little Done

The Ash Street Project settled down to making this household's collective life interesting today. We had some momentary water outages this morning: nothing serious, just enough to have the faucets spit at us a little when we turned them on later.

More exciting, we were without natural gas for a while. A crew from the gas company came around noon, setting up to lay our new gas line. This one is plastic, replacing the old metal one - which ran straight under the garage. The former owners made some interesting decisions when they remodeled this place.

I think someone cut this little trench by hand.

I'd asked the technician from the gas company if we needed to move things out of the way, when he was here earlier in the month to check the place out. He assured me that there would be plenty of room.

He may have been an optimist. Or, he may not have realized just how big the machine that his company sent would be.

That was precision driving, getting that thing back here.

The crew that was here today did a really good job of cutting a trench down the east side of the garage, then running a slit westward toward the street. The guy on the trencher modified the slide a little, but as our son said, "maybe now it will work better."

That was a tight squeeze.
You can see the slide, to the left of the trencher.

Next step, cutting a slit in the sod, and pulling the gas line through it.

This gives an idea of how deep the gas line is.

So, now we've got a filled-in trench about five or six inches across, an untidy line of sod running toward the street, and an embossed yard where the tire treads sank in a bit. Nothing that a season or so of natural growth and raking wouldn't take care of.

But, one of the guys told me that there contractor has a restoration company come in and fix things up after they're done. Great! The only thing is, I suspect that strips of our yard will look better than the rest, where the restoration guys did their work.

One of the great side-effects of the gas line work was that my son and I had some time together, watching what was going on and talking.

My wife tells me that #2 daughter made the Dean's List at Concordia during the last academic session. #2 daughter's pretty happy about that. So am I. "That's my girl," and all that.

Apart from taking some photos of the Ash Street Project, I got some more writing done, did a few errands downtown, and put in time at Fitness Guru, that exercise place.

And, once again, topped off the day by reading Garfield with my son.