Suddenly the World Seems Such a Perfect Place...

8 days. 8 days, ladies and gentlemen, of taking cold showers on mornings where the outside temperature was only 50° Fahrenheit (for those living in Celsius countries, 10°...) One day longer than it took sky daddy to create a world that lacked running hot water... (And Genesis claims this creation was perfect?!)

You see, on that so auspicious of dates, Friday the 13th, when most people were calling off work so a black cat couldn't possibly cross their path; avoiding cracks in the sidewalks because they love their grandmothers; and overall acting as if there were some malignant force in the universe out to get them (ego much?), we ran out of oil. Oil, mind you, that was used solely for hot water... (See here for how we ended up no longer using it to heat the home... If you care...)

Hot water, mind you, is the most precious commodity in my life (next to food, ice tea, oxygen, and Moulin Rogue on DVD...)

So for the last eight days, it's been a personal race to see how fast a shower could possibly be... 30 seconds it seems, if you are very generous with the soap and very careless with then removing all those soapy bits off you.

Mind you, being as even if it were 90° F (32.22222222222222° Celsius), I would still be taking a hot shower. That's just how I role. Others seem to think a cold shower is refreshing and need not be exactly a hurried process so much as an opportunity to wake up before work... I claim that's what coffee is for, but what could I possibly know, right?

But today, my awesome brother-in-law of an electrician, and my father, Grand Poombah of all thing plumbing related, helped me hook up my new electric hot water box! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, weighing exactly ten pounds, only two inches deep, and length- and width-wise smaller than a pizza box, not only was it half the price of a minimum delivery of oil (150 gallons oil = $900), if you are as fortunate as I to have family that paid tons of money for a special skill in high demand, you have the added bonus of avoiding paying an electrician and a plumber for their time... (you just have to feed them a steak dinner from the grill...)

Well worth it.

I pretty much kicked them out when they were done and spent the next hour under running hot water...

Ahhhh.....

Mind you, I now have to run back to Home Depot and return the how-many-feet of copper pipe I didn't need to buy in order to make my hot-water dreams come true (remember, that wasn't the high-demand skill I went to school for...), but that's just icing on the cake--I now am getting a "refund" from Home Depot and hence spent even less than I thought I had to (which, even if I would have had to use all that stinkin' pipe, was still cheaper then the $900 for a minimum of oil that only would have lasted six months...)

Suddenly the world does seem such a perfect place...