Movin' on in. Brrrr.

We moved in on a Friday, a nice warm day in June.  It was exciting all right, super stressful of course because moving always is.  I had to work that day so Mike handled the whole thing, save me shuffling the dog to my folks' place and back.  It was a long, anxiety-riddled process to get here and more maddening than I care to reflect upon.  But it's moving day and we couldn't be more excited to move into our new home.

We're finally all in, the dog is sniffing everything, we're eating crappy pizza from somewhere nearby....wow, we did it.  Whew.

Mike had to work the next day but thankfully I did not, so I was able to begin the monstrous task of unpacking.  La dee da, everything is fine, unpacking like a mad woman.  It's summer so it's warm and I feel gross so it's time to shower.  Why won't the water heat up?  

I get out of my extremely brief chilly shower and call Mike.  "Why is the shower cold?"  He says, "Huh?  It was fine this morning."  Thinking maybe I'm crazy from the whole process of moving, I go up to check again.  Nope, cold.  Check other faucets; nope, cold.  Ok.  Welcome to your new home.

I go downstairs, I'm checking out the water heater.  It's plugged in, it's on, mmm hmm, we should be all good, right?  I flip through the manual, find out much to my disappointment that it's electric, try to do the scant few obscure things it says to do though we don't seem to have the same parts as depicted.  I call the manufacturer and they are, well, quite unhelpful and useless, to say the least.  How did the inspector not catch this?  (More on inspectors in later posts I'm sure.)

Mike comes home, we try to figure it out, flip the fuses, blah blah blah, but we get nowhere.  He's still doubting me about the whole no-hot-water thing for some reason and looking at me like a weirdo from another planet.  We hope that maybe the darn thing will heat up some water by the next day.  Still, how did Mike and the inspector get hot water?  I'm so confused.

We wake up, all excited for some hot water baby!  Yeah!  Wow...oh.....no........no hot water.  And it's Sunday.  I look up the hot water heater online, find the store that sells it, so I read some reviews.  Every single one says what a piece of cheap junk it is and how they've spent inordinate amounts of time and money trying to fix it.  And ours is brand new.

After a brief discussion, we opt to just, ugh, screw it, let's get a new one.  Why spend inordinate amounts of time, money, and effort on trying to fix something that will continuously break.  "But it's Sunday, sweetheart, that's an emergency install fee."  "I don't care," he says, "It's hot out, we stink, we work tomorrow, we need hot water."

We work the phones and the internet and find a really well rated hot water heater from a store who has someone that will install it the same day.  Whewwww.....It's a 4000 degree day outside in Chicago but off we went to buy it.  Installation fees added up to nearly the cost of the heater, but, it's not like we had a choice.

Our super grumpy installation guy shows up and in a matter of minutes, it's in.  Wait a couple hours, he said, and you're basking in hot water glory.  Well, he didn't say the second part as he was clearly an unhappy fellow.  He says to Mike, I got a parking ticket in the alley, give me some cash.  No one gets parking tickets in our alley.  Seriously, people park back there all day long with no problem.  Thankfully Mike doubted his story and told him to take the old water heater with him to sell or part out.

What a fiasco, but hey, we have hot water.  And not a stitch of a problem since.  I do make sure to bask in that hot water, appreciate every drop, and not take it for granted.