Taking it all in

Had a setback today with what should have been a reasonably simple repair to the house. The previous owner's installed a water heater that was bigger than the old one.... this had the unfortunate side effect of meaning that the vent hole that had been cut into the brick was below the heater's vent level. So the technical term for what we have is a "negative grade condition", i.e. the pipe points down toward the vent, and in the crook of the vent gas can build up and explode.

You would think the previous owner of the house would be responsible for this. They are after all responsible for ensuring that water heater is strapped into place so that a minor earthquake doesn't topple it, causing it to explode. But we are not so sure. The previous owners disclosed that the vent from the heater to the exterior of the house had become decoupled and that they weren't responsible for coupling it. It has since been coupled --by a nice guy that their real estate agent dispatched-- in a manner that could only be described as a code violation. Still, I can't be sure we're not going to have to take the hit here.

These sorts of things pile up after you move in. The rainy season comes along and the next thing you know there's an inch deep puddle just outside your front door. The brick at the bottom of the puddle, is thick with algae and getting thicker. The puddle is right where your doormat should go, only if you put it there, it gets soaked through and fools people into thinking they should use it.

Meanwhile the brick paths in the backyard are slowly being overtaken by weeds tall enough for the wind to blow them around. Where do these things come from? The plant beds in the back yard were covered in tarp, the tarp was covered over with bark and yet --no matter-- the weeds just keep coming. The problem implies a range of products that I am only dimly familair with, in an aisle of Home Depot that folks who shop at Farmer's Markets probably aren't supposed to venture down.

I am experiencing strange reactions to the weather. I know it takes wind to for a storm to move on, to clear out the clouds and fog. But a morning of 20 to 40 mph winds toppled my olive tree and prompted some sudden staking and lashing of a tree still very much in its' pot. Now we have more atypically warm sun, which makes A. and the cats much happier. But every time the sun comes out, more of the weeds appear.

Maybe the rain going away is a good thing after all though, because I've just noticed that rain water has taken to streaming into our basement. Confounding all expectations, the previous owner placed a drain right where the streaming happens. This is one of the few design considerations that seems to have held up to even the most casual of scrutiny.

The door from the kitchen to the backyard for instance has a threshold that is routinely below the waterline for for the doorway. It is constantly wet, and we've both nearly slipped on it numerous times. All of this does not deter the ants though, who have arrived and just keep on arriving despite daily mass executions. Despite the occasional rendering of their tribe into a kind of paste as we slip our way into the kitchen.

Most of the time I feel that the onus is on us to handle these things with aplomb, to not sweat the small stuff, and to not let the bastards get me down. In closing, I'd like to give a shout out to one such bastard. I don't know who he is but his tag is on the telephone pole outside our house, and also on our garage door: