Why?

Steve mentioned Thursday that the water line was broken again.  We called a different plumbing company and they came out first thing Friday morning (well, first thing to them, anyway) with all the equipment and parts they needed.  In short order they had dug up the line and found the problem.  As we had suspected, the previous repair job had not been exactly up to standards and had failed after just two months.  They fixed that and advised us to let the glue set overnight (always a good idea and something else the previous repair person did not do).  The only snag was that the conduit got broke.  They thought they had done it, and called their office to call in an electrician.  The electrician of course did not get back to them until late that day.  His response was that replacing conduit is usually more trouble than it was worth and we would be better off to patch it ourselves.  I was not surprised, but since Steve is at work all day today, it was up to me to seal it up well enough to withstand blowing water until he can get patched later in the week. 

Single gloves

I went to find gloves.  I wanted something different from my usual insulated feeding gloves, because I needed a as much dexterity as possible.  So, I dug in the glove bin and found lots of gloves, as you can see.  Notice, however, that those are not pairs.  There are some left gloves.  There are some right gloves.  Those are all orphaned unmatched gloves.  Well, I did eventually find a mate to one of them.  I'd have used unmatched, but there weren't even two of the same type and and weight.  Color, I don't care so much about, but it just feels wrong in the type and weight don't match, at least.  Like socks.

I also found several sets of gloves that I would not categorize as work gloves.  Now, Sarah's not very good about separating work gloves from non-work gloves and for the most part I really don't care.  I did, however, care this time.  I found this lovely hand-knit custom glove that I started last spring in with the work gloves.  I've gotten distracted and haven't quite finished its mate, but still, this lovely little wool-silk designed and created by me glove is decidedly not a work glove!

Definitely not a work glove.

I rescued the treasure and went out to farmerize the pump conduit.  Yes, I have resorted to the farmer-style temporary patch that consists of plastic bags secured with electrical tape.  When I looked closer at the conduit, I am not convinced that yesterday's mishap was the first.  I think it was just the first that we were told about.  The conduit was broken in two places on the vertical leg.  The lower break was packed full of mud.  That likely only would have happened if someone else had back-filled over a break and not told us about it.  It was just too solid to have happened just yesterday as the pipe was being exposed.  I agonized a bit over what to do and finally decided that it had clearly been operating that way for a while, so I took a leap of faith that the insulation was intact on the wiring and sealed it up.  It must be fine.  The pump is working again, and there's no smoking, arching or sparking.  No breakers have gone, so all indications are that I got lucky.  Steve can fix it right in the next day or two, but I really need to do some laundry.