Dig your own hole

So, I haven't been doing very much on the knitting front the last couple of days. We had a few lovely house guests last week -- our friend Mark (who makes amazing music under the name Woodpigeon -- please look him up) was here for a few days to hang out with us and get to know Ruby. Then Aaron's mum, Leena, flew in from Calgary to spend some time with her granddaughter. As if that wasn't busy enough, when I went downstairs to take our guest towels out of the wash before Leena arrived last Wednesday, I noticed a bad smell. At the bottom of the stairs I could see a mess and I immediately thought that an animal had gotten into the house and left turds around. When I turned on the light, I realized that those weren't animal turds... they were my own (and Aaron's, I suppose). Our sewer had backed up.

Now, I won't go into the details, but one plumber came by the next day and basically swindled me out of about $500 (again, I won't get into the details -- they're fairly boring and really upsetting) and then quoted me $6,000 to repair the problem. After some searching (and much swearing), Aaron found a much more honest plumbing company who quoted us between $2,000 and $4,000, which seemed at least a little more manageable. The next day a couple of guys had dug a seven foot deep hole in our front yard and replaced the pipe, which was completely crumbled and hadn't been touched for 100 years. The hole has now been neatly covered and they figure we can probably squeeze about $1500 out of the city to cover some of the costs.

Thankfully, Ruby has enough Santas in her life (Leena already filled our home with new toys on her visit) so our financial ruin probably won't destroy our Christmas. Aaron and I are sticking to under $20 for each other, because we're considering our house our gift to each other this year (Merry Christmas, baby -- I got you a $4,000 sewer pipe!). As for everyone else, I still haven't figured out what to get for our family and I'm trying to make stuff for our friends out of stashed yarn. I'll post some pics and details tomorrow.