The day before yesterday I had some errands to run. Eric called and told me there were two men in the backyard. This didn't alarm me too much because of the whole fence/easement situation (if you want, you can refresh your memory HERE... just don't read a few posts after that or you'll see warm sunny days in Puerto Rico) but these guys were doing something against the house outside his window. In the true Melanie fashion of overreacting, I told Eric to get a gun and go ask them if he could help them with anything. He didn't make it out there before they were gone but I was on my way home. When I got here, the local cable company had about 5 cars parked in the street. As normally done, the cable company knocked on my door to let me know they'd be in the backyard trying to locate their cable (which they were suspecting to be right up against my fencepost). So, I figured the other guys had something to do with that. Fast forward to yesterday. I heard a thump happening every minute or so and figured it was Maggie. I looked out the back window and saw the water hose and its reel near the back porch. (Sigh...) I figured it was definitely a Maggie noise. I went around the house later to check out the crime scene and that's when I heard the thumping noise coming from our gas meter. There was a faint smell of gas so I, once again, overreacted and called Centerpoint. They sent someone out and he noticed that the two men were probably contractors that had been by to add some new box to my meter. Ahh... mystery solved. He smelled a little bit of gas but it wasn't registering on his gadget so he decided to check on some gasket around the new box. About 10 minutes and some clanking later, he came to tell me he replaced the meter. The contractors literally did a bang up job on installing the new box which pushed some part over causing a thump to hit. Great news. He also said that since they messed it up and the thing wasn't rotating right, it wasn't reading anything so I had about 24 hours of free gas. "Excuse me, utility company, can you come fix my meter so you cannot undercharge me?"
I'm leaving you with a random picture I took a few weeks ago out at the wildlife reserve.
