I sit here in the quiet of my pre-Corona virus calm house. The chaos is looming…waiting. Indiana University and Purdue University, the two flagship colleges of Indiana, have moved to online classes after their spring breaks next week. It is only a matter of time before the smaller colleges follow suit. Then I will be back to a full house. Hopefully, we have the bandwidth to handle all that online classing. Anyway, for now, it’s quiet. Next week, who knows!

A couple weeks ago, I had an expensive day. It was one of those days that we hope only happens once in a while. In fact, we can’t afford those kind of days often. It started around Wednesday. We learned that we have an odd alarm in our house. It went off. It was LOUD in that attention grabbing, alarm kind of way. It’s in our basement, and could be heard all over the house. It had an ominous red light too, which had always been there, but never had been on…until the moment the alarm went off. There was a thankfully obvious on/off switch. But even after Travis turned off the switch, the light remained glowing. That can’t be good. So, I texted the previous owner of our house. His response was, “Oh, that. It’s just the grinder. Sometimes when you overwhelm it, like when you empty the bathtub and the dishwasher is going, the alarm goes off. It will fix itself shortly.” It did fix itself shortly, but over the next couple days, it started going off more and more. By Friday morning, a simple toilet flush set off the alarm. This was indeed alarming! So Friday morning, I called a plumber. They came to the house and told Trent, who was mercifully home, that they don’t work on grinders. UGH! I’m still waiting for the service call bill from them. That day, I ended up at the Athletic Director’s office for odd reasons and I mentioned it to Randy. Randy knows people. He made a few calls, and got me a contact who knew a company that worked on grinders. 

When I got back to my office, I made a few more calls and got that company. The owner of that company pulled a couple guys off a job to look at my grinder situation. He told me not to run much water unless I didn’t mind if it ended up backing up in my house. I called Trent and said, “DO NOT SHOWER! DO NOT FLUSH THE TOILET! PLEASE PEE IN THE YARD!” I actually can’t remember ever telling my boys to please pee in the yard. In fact, I have a vague memory of yelling at them for this behavior. But today is a new day!

That day, they gave us a loaner grinder. Who even knew those were a thing. We are still waiting to see if ours can be repaired. If not, it’s $3200 for a new grinder. I have a bill for a couple hundred just for replacing the grinder with the loaner. 

Later that day, I was driving in the countryside between Valparaiso and Kouts to pick up Zach, a friend of Tayden’s and a frequent visitor to our house. He’s more like my fifth child. In that pretty countryside, I got a flat tire. I don’t recall driving over anything. This is my third flat tire in the 2 ½ years since I got these tires on the truck. On the first one, I discovered two important things. First, the jack for Bert looks like a child’s toy next to my behemoth car. Second, I have roadside assistance on my insurance. I called roadside assistance and went behind my car to drop the spare, since I know how to do that, and I was in a business parking lot, not I-90 like the time before. 

Travis lost it. He didn’t care if the tires still had tread. We got lemons. He immediately went online and ordered the nicest tires that Tire Barn had. I made an early morning appointment for the next day. Well, I let them know my dissatisfaction fairly clearly. Every time I had been in there to repair a flat or leaking tire, I got to hear how great my brand of tire was, and how they can’t believe the problems I had encountered. I actually drive with a portable pump in my car because my leaky tires demand air so frequently. 

So, after demanding a price match with Sam’s club, I spent a little over $1100 for new tires and alignment. The poor guy behind the counter tried to tell me how good a deal I got. I laid into this poor guy about leaky tires, flat tires on the side of an expressway, and 2 ½ years of uncertainty before getting to spend an exorbitant amount before the tires’ lifespan was technically even over, but thanks for that great deal. Then he got to hear about my grinder…because there was no stopping me and he was trapped!

So, I still have the loaner grinder and am waiting for the bills to come in for that day. I’m hoping to keep it under $5000. I’m also hoping not to have another day like that soon. Have a great Humpday everyone!