I’m lucky enough to be able to own a home rather than rent, but of course that situation brings with it a lot of unpredictability. Case-in-point; before we bought this house, one of the conditions was that the seller replace the underground sewer drain leading from the house out into the street. This is a common issue with houses of this age – the old pipe deteriorates and collapses, leading to really fun things like sewage backing up into the basement. In any case, they agreed to do that before we took ownership of the house. Unfortunately the people they hired to do that job seem to have been a really slap-dash outfit. Their work wrecked part of our front walkway which they refused to fix for several weeks, and when they finally did they just use some cement sealing material which lasted for about a month. Annoying but we’ll get it figured out at some point. The bigger issue, which we found out this past weekend, was that when they tied the new PVC part of the main drain pipe into the existing cast-iron waste stack, they both mis-measured the angle slightly and used an incorrect connector, not to mention incorrectly bracing the cast-iron (it was basically resting on top of the PVC). End result – water dripping out of the gap between the two which had slowly worked its way open over the two years we’ve lived here.
My spouse and I are fine – there was no major damage because luckily I noticed in time, but we did have to shell out some $$$ to get it remediated properly. Kind of the high point of the whole ordeal is that we also got our ancient hot water heater replaced, so at least we’ll have nice hot water (rather than aggressively lukewarm water) once winter rolls around.
Unfortunately the sawing through metal right outside my office door wasn’t conducive to writing this week, so I don’t really have that much to link to here. I think I spelled my own doom when I said a few weeks ago that I’d probably be done with first episode reviews in a week. Speaking it out loud (or writing it on the internet) just seems to ensure that it won’t actually come true. But I’m pretty close now – and I’ve been assured by multiple readers over the years that they find some value in my perspective even if it’s less timely. Thank you for helping me keep my confidence up and reminding me that there are reasons why I continue to do this season after season!
Here’s what you may have missed the last couple of weeks:
- Summer 2022 First Impressions – Black Summoner – A fairly bog-standard isekai scenario that makes the error of joining the protagonist after he’s already become quite powerful. It didn’t leave me with a lot of reasons to be interested in his journey, and once again it seems like a fantasy story that didn’t really have to be an isekai.
- Summer 2022 First Impressions – Extreme Hearts – An unexpectedly fun premiere that manages to pack in a lot of action and character growth without making it seem as though the pacing is out-of-control. It seems to have an idol component that I personally feel probably isn’t necessary, but I’ll see how that rolls out after another couple of episodes.
- Summer 2022 First Impressions – Shine On! Bakumatsu Boys – An interesting twist on historical fiction which positions a group of criminals as the Shinsengumi. While the first episode didn’t blow me away I feel like this could be a fun watch. It at least has some cool visual style.