Gas, Electricity, and Groundhogs

A guy from the gas company came over today to turn on the meters. I’m not sure what that means, exactly, since the hot water is hot and presumably the people renting over the winter had working furnaces, but it is now in our name.

Meta-Update: Mike’s name. I handled the bills in Denver for the last 17 or so years. Hand-off time: Rapid City bills are Mike’s problem.

The electric guy recommended to me by the hot tub guy was bludgeoned by texts. To be fair, he did ask. I think I may have scared him away. I called him and the voicemail message said to send a text, so I did. Let’s see if I can reproduce it in this format…

Sorry, I can’t talk right now.

Hi. This is Mark Sizer. I just got a place here in Rapid and I am thinking about a hot tub. The current electric will not support that. The hot tub guy recommended you. So, here we are. Call or text back at your convenience.

Can you send me pics of the panel

I can try…

We would prefer both 220 50amp on the “A Upstairs” box. (I did mention that a sauna would go nicely next to the hot tub, right?)

But one each would be OK, too.

As long as I am texting everything, a second floor deck will probably require this stuff to move above the eves:

I would like to think “hole saw and flashing”, but I doubt it is that simple.

I have not heard back. I prefer to think that he’s burning up his phone calculating how much he can charge this idiot.

Meta-Note: I’m leaving names out of this. It’s not that I don’t know them, it’s that these poor people have to deal with me. Adding dealing with the toxic wasteland that is the public Internet is just not deserved – even for those bastages at U-Haul.

And I got the “We’ve Moved” cards designed and off to a printer, who is also making us a return address stamp. One of the mortgage writers in Denver (we had three of them) gave me one and – even with a Comic Sans font – it was quite handy. Since no one is reading this, I don’t have to worry about giving away the surprise: