Above freezing, scant snow in wet strands, otherwise, wholesome bright  winter sun.  Anticipation preceding my lead water line replacement, I had no idea till I hiked right up  to it.  The water company said they were going to replace the water line leading from my front sidewalk to my basement, where the water meter blinks and rats to the authorities whatever my use of water tells the thought police.   They neglected to say when they were going to do it, so it was a lovely Roald Dahl-like serendipity when I came upon over a dozen workers, myriad large trucks equipped for Himalayan  disaster relief, and several smiling warmly dressed people from the waterworks, there to deal with fucked up people, me too, whose poison heavy metal water conduits  are rotting everyone's weak little brains out.  They needed my permission to enter my house. 

How democratic.   They had already demolished one square yard of  sidewalk and were six feet down it, a fellow in the hole with steel appurtenances oscillating and plunging, and  there was an oblong hole in the street about six by eight feet, ten feet down,  showing wide shitty corroded pipes in several directions, like the Jolly Green Giant's heart after he smoked a carton of unfiltered Lucky Strikes a day for sixty years, like since birth, as is common around the North Side.  There was a person in that hole, working away.   I knew this was coming, but realities deserve a medal for their inventiveness.  It was so different from my mixed anticipations.  

Did you ever read William Faulkner's book As I Lay Dying?  At the end of it, a character, after a novel full of hardship and loss, gains a victrola, or, primitive record player.    I got a free water shut off valve in the basement, and I'm so happy about that I could pleasure the load of people who replaced my water lines, assuming everyone takes a bath, first. It's a good thing that won't happen.   It would not be near as serendipitous if everyone had to blow the water works.   In other news...

The electric company sends me emails reminding me that I am a  little puke for using more energy this week than last.  That don't give a flying fuck about my woodworking project, they know it's my table saw,  only pricks like me run that many amps in what normal customers  use as a spare bedroom for their relatives, and the thought police are aware no one visits my hovel.   Commissars are scratching their heads, wondering why a zero like me would use more watts than a common shit kicker.    I'm trying, trying damn it, to explain, to make their lives easier.