Problem Solving....

I was up until 12:30 last night. Edward and I were trying to figure out if something in the front room was causing our lights to flicker. It had gotten so bad that Edward's UPS was shutting down his computer to project it. We were getting drop outs in power and had lights dimming or flashing off and on. It would do this for 10 minutes or so then quit. Then start again. We'd had the power company out twice and they said the power was clean coming into the house.

We figured out what was going on this morning by accident. We started by changing out some sockets around house, thinking they might be shorting out. The first was outside by AC unit. It looked a little rusted and not sealed, so we bought a new cover for it and installed that. While we were doing that we noticed the power line from the house to the outside part of the AC was cracked and rusted. Aha! We thought, we've found our problem. So we called an electrician to come out and replace the line. Oh, and while he was out here, could he see if he could track down why the lights were flickering.

He got out here late morning and started with the junction box in the garage to see if he could figure out why the lights were flickering. He put his hand on the breakers... "Nothing's warm". The house was built in 1979, so it had an old junction box. It doesn't have a single main breakers that will shut down the whole house. That wasn't required by code in 1979. There are five big breakers that need to be thrown to bring the whole house down. One for the AC, one for the range. Those and two others are for 220V. The one labeled "main lighting" will take down all the 110V in the house. Below that there are more breakers that will take down regions in the house. He poked and tested for a few minutes, then ZZziiitt! "Well, we're making progress." He said cheerfully. Edward and I just started laughing. He worked the main lighting breaker out of the box. Yup, there was the problem. One of the contacts on the breaker looked scored and pitted. Not good. That would explain why all the lights in the house would flicker at the same time. Luckily for us, there was a spare breaker of the size he needed right there in the box. So he switched out the breakers, and reconnected everything. Then he disabled the bad one and stuck it back in the place the spare had been, so that there weren't any live contacts exposed, and closed up the box. The lights haven't flickered since.

Next he fixed the power line to the AC. Turns out that was fine and would have been so for quite a while. The outer casing was cracked but there was steel under that what wasn't even close to leaking. The wires themselves were fine. He replaced the casing, threading the same wires through the new casing and reconnected it to the AC.

The lights have been solid ever since. What a relief. Electricity makes me nervous. Electricians scare me. They have a reputation for using you to "make their next boat payment". This guy was nice. He didn't try to sell us a new junction box, or anything else. Our office uses this company to do work in the building, so I had a recommendation form the office operations manager before I called him. It'll be about $200, maybe a little more. He left saying they'd send us a bill. We're glad its done. Both of us were worried about the AC getting damaged, or the microwave, the TV, the stereo, never mind that we were afraid it would start a fire if we couldn't find it. Turns out that what we called them out for wasn't what was causing the lights to flicker at all. I guess that's the way it works sometimes, the problem that wasn't a problem, gets the problem solved...

Mara's Little Adventure...

Edward called me at work this morning. "I think we need to take Mara in." Ok. What's she doing...? "Well, she was in the box for about a minute and didn't pee much." That's a bad sign. It usually indicates a UTI or something serious.

I called the Mobile Vet. "The Doctor's not in today. I can put you on the schedule for tomorrow." Not sure we wanted to wait that long. So I called our old vet. "How about 11:15?" Sounds good. So, I went home at 10:15, picked up Edward and Mara and off we went.

We thought it would take both of us to get her there. Turns out she was better then we thought she would be. She was hiding under the bed when it was time to leave so Edward pulled her out. Then we wrapped her in a towel and I covered her head with it. She didn't realize what was going on until she was half way into the carrier and the door rattled. I could feel her tense up, but by that point all I had to do was put a hand on her behind and push. By the time she got untangled from the towel, we had the door latched. She was not a happy girl. But she didn't struggle or try to get out of the carrier like last time, and she didn't cry much at all on the way to the vet. She even started out of the carrier when we opened the door once we were in the examining room, instead of cowering in the back and having to be unceremoniously dumped out.

We kept telling her she wasn't going back to PetSmart, and we promised we'd take her back home just as soon as the doctor was finished with her. I don't think she believed us.

The doctor gave her a good look over, felt her bladder and said it felt a little thick, like she had an infection. She also took a blood sample to check her kidneys and other organ function. Then she sent us home with some antibiotics and an anti-inflammatory to help her feel better.

Grand total: $179.57. Vet trips ain't cheap.

We put her back in the carrier and took her home. She cried a little more this time and once tried to dig her way out of the carrier before we got here. When we opened the door we had to catch her and give her the first antibiotic. Luckily, she's not a hard cat to pill. Then she got the anti-inflammatory. Then she got some treats... We were both surprised that she didn't run and go hide under the bed again. She stayed out, had a few mouthfuls of dry food and rubbed on everything she got near. It was like she was marking everything to make sure it was all still hers. Or maybe, she was saying "I'm so glad to be home!" Like a frightened flier kissing the ground after a particularly rough flight.

We think this all may have been brought on by the rough last few days we've all had. During all the tree work, she was hiding under the beds. It was unnerving enough for us to listen to the thud, thud of heavy branches hitting the ground on top of the roar of the chain saws. Add to that visitors for two days earlier in the week. She hides then, too. It's entirely likely that she just hadn't been drinking enough. But we think we caught this early enough. While she's been hiding under the bed some, it hasn't been all the time. Last night she was on the bed and up on the bookcases, the only place in the whole house where she chases her own tail. I'm pretty sure she'll be OK... I hope so. 'Cause we don't like these little adventures any more then she does....