Teleidoscope

Thu, Oct 04, 2007

Gas Line

Posted at 6:31 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

I spent half the day at the office while they were moving the wires from the old breaker box to the new breaker box. So I missed the big excitement for the day. This is probably just as well. I am not quite as prone to anxiety attacks as my Aunt Irma, but I do tend to get stressed out... and this week is already stressful.

Yesterday a man came out to mark the underground gas and phone lines so the backhoe would know where NOT to dig. But Ross hit it anyway. (The hissing was not a good sign.) They sent away a truck that was bringing roadbase for the driveway.

Ross said that at the place where he ran into trouble, there was only six inches of dirt above the gas line. I suspect the power company did not bother to bury it as deeply as it should have. But there is also a huge deep puddle that always forms there at the end of my driveway when things are wet, and cars and trucks going through the puddle have probably splashed away a lot of the dirt over the years.

By the time I arrived home at 4:30, the power company had reset the gasline, and there was a huge deep trench the front of my house to the pole with the transformer. The new breaker box is in place (though still attached to the overhead lines at this point). The deck has not been modified yet, and the airconditioner is still disconnected.

Ross says he should still finish tomorrow easily. This is good. There is nasty weather predicted for Saturday afternoon, and there are already some clouds beginning to move in.

I hope there are no more surprises or delays.

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'Heirloom' Pie Tins

Posted at 6:31 pm MDT to Technology

The pans I used when I baked the squash pies earlier in the week are actual pie tins made of tinned steel. They have "New England Pie Company 5 ¢ Deposit" molded into their bottoms. They are quite shallow, like the modern disposable aluminum foil pie pans that have replaced them in commercial use. But unlike other pie pans I've seen, they have some small holes in the bottoms so that a little steam can escape.

I am fairly certain my Grandma had a pile of these stashed in her basement and I acquired them when I got my first apartment. She must have had a lot of them. I've tossed out a few over the years that got scraped and rusty (or disgustingly mouse-contaminated) and I still have half a dozen or so of the tins. And I don't think I got the full stash.

Turning them in for the deposit must have been a real nuisance. And the New England Pie Company must have made really yummy pies.

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