As you may remember, our whole neighborhood is having storm drains installed by the Township.  We are doing this because some people have bad flooding problems (we do not, but it was everyone or no one with this project, and it won’t help anyone’s property values to have the Okefenokee Swamp bordering our neighborhood).  We have already sacrificed two big ass oak trees from our front yard to this endeavor. 

Because of the excavation, the contractor has assiduously been placing (and replacing) markers for the gas lines, water lines, electric lines and cable.  During the winter, they would paint the snow.  When the snow melted, they would paint the grass.  When it snowed again, they would paint the new snow, etc., etc., etc.  And they further marked everything with little flags everywhere – and they kept replacing those flags as needed.

So Friday, they finally got around to doing major excavation on our property.  This means digging a big ass trench across the front of the property, digging up the bottom third of our driveway, and digging a big ass hole on the far side of our driveway. 

And, despite the many many markings and many many flags (each of which bear a warning to hand dig),  they still managed to break the water line, the gas line, and cut the cable.

I guess we should be grateful that they never took out the electric?

Apparently, this is a common enough event for them to have their own pipe fitters on hand to fix the water and gas lines. 

Unfortunately, fixing the cable is not within their skill set.

But we were assured they had called our local cable company and someone would be out shortly to fix the cable. Oh, and no, they couldn’t give us a time estimate.

Okie dokie.

Hours pass, it’s 5 o’clock, 6 o’clock … at 7 o’clock I called our cable company and spoke to a very nice fellow in Missouri. 

They had no work order from anyone for our property. 

Uh-oh.

Somebody lied to me (well, to my husband, but it still pissed me the fuck off).

The soonest they could have someone out to fix the cable was Sunday around noon.

No cable, means no internet and no TV.

Talk about the long weekend. 

Want to know how much time I waste on the internet and TV over a weekend?  I read a 500 page book over the weekend.  (Parasite by Seanan McGuire writing as Mira Grant – good read, but then, everything Seanan writes is a good read.) 

Okay, we did sneak over to McDonalds with our laptops on Saturday; but I still felt like Fat Old Lady Pioneer Woman. 

Happily, the guy from the cable company was great and once he found the other end of the cut cable, he was able to get us connected and back to our lives of staring passively at screens.

And THAT was my week.