Well, I did something again! I have been without hot water pretty much the whole time I've been in my new place, and I bought a new water heater some time ago to remedy the situation. But the new water heater came with dire warnings about hard water destroying its frilly pink inner workings, so: Given the fact that my well water is pretty much capable of standing up on its own, I needed a new water softener, also. Tuesday afternoon, I finally decided to take the afternoon off from work, to completely fuck everything up.

That means, replacing the water line to the house from the well, burying it, dumping the old outdoor water softener, hooking it up to the new water line, getting the new washer plumbing done, and then getting the gas company out to fill the old tanks and hook them up to the new tankless water heater I've set up outside, because I REALLY don't want gas burning anywhere inside my death trap of a trailer. So, I figured I would get the new line buried, plumb everything, and basically build the new system in parallel to the old so that the system would be ready to go and finished, giving me days to complete the work, and I would be out of having water no more than an hour or two, tops.

On to reality.

The second I went to dig the trench for the new line, I found one of, it turns out, MANY lines the insane former owner had put underground. I knew I had found it when the fucking GEYSER of muddy water erupted from the ground with the first shovel full of dirt I dug. The line was connected to the high side of the pump, and further illustrating the genius of the former's plumbing- there was NO shutoff valve for that part of the system.

So, I could only watch as a 750 gallon holding tank blew its load all over my (now flooded) yard. I turned the power off and headed to Home Depot for supplies. When I got home, I proceeded to start digging again, since now, I was going to have to repair the line BEFORE I would have water again.

My well system sits under a big oak tree in my back yard, so of course, digging means cutting through ROOTS. LOTS of them. So, I didn't find it unusual to meet resistance as I made my way across the yard, swinging an ancient tool know as a Mattock (think wide bladed, sharp pickaxe) in ever more painful arcs into the defiant tree roots. Some of them were 5 inches thick. I was nearly there when I encountered a really tough, but surprisingly small "root".

Turns out Fiber optic lines are really tough. It took at least a dozen blows from the mattock before it finally gave way, and I had my prize: The neighborhood FIOS trunk line that for some reason runs past my house. I had killed the entire system. I could hear confused noises from some of the surrounding homes as football games ended suddenly, pornography stopped downloading, and various internets and baubles went dark, returning my neighbors to the early '90s.

The FIOS team got out here this afternoon, and I'm hoping no one saw the truck. Pretty sure everyone wants to know why the latest episode of Survivor is absent from their DVRs. At least I have an internets again.