Okay, this is getting boring

The drain cleaners are still snaking our sewer lines. They've been at it for the past three days, and let me tell you, it's been riveting. There have been some really dramatic moments when they thought they might have gotten all the way through, but those were false alarms. The second day they came out, we cut a small hole over the pipe where there was a blockage, and dug down to the pipe to see if it was broken. This produced what Jill called the Pit of Despair:



There wasn't anything wrong with the pipe at that location, so they kept snaking, and again ran into a blockage. The third day they started digging a large trench in our patio area to replace ten feet of pipe. We hope it's the right ten feet--there's really no way to tell until after they dig it up and put the new pipe in and see if water goes down it. The digging is not a speedy process, so it continues on tomorrow. On the fourth day of digging, my true love gave to me, four thousand dollars in plumbing bills, three clumps of tree roots, two overflowing toilets, and a whole lot of plastic bags.

Jill and I have used the downtime productively, finally getting the place decorated for the holidays. Here's a look from the inside:



And here's one view of the outside (pay no attention to the gate that is on the ground, covering up the big hole the drain cleaners left).


And from across the street, with Jill's car front and center:


We also hung up our lighted sign on the outside of the building, which should have been a simple matter of sliding a printed piece of acrylic into the grooves in the existing light box, but it turned out to be a very tight fit, so I had to whack at it a lot. Jill, always helpful and sympathetic, stood on the ground and took this movie without my knowledge: