The good news is that the house didn’t burn down. At least that’s what we realized in retrospect. It started in mid-January when we noticed two plugs in our kitchen were dead. I check the electrical box and the breaker had popped, so I flipped it back on. A pop and a sizzle later, it luckily shut itself off again as the smell of burning plastic filled the kitchen, but we couldn’t locate the source. It took two months for our electrician to remember to fit us into his schedule, and yesterday afternoon he arrived and found this former outlet melted and dangling under the house. It appears to be a forgotten outlet that was just shoved out of the way under the house when we added the front deck a decade or more ago. When it finally shorted out, we were far closer to disaster than we realized!
I’m the guy who wears a T-shirt with the message, “Don’t assume I fix things”, which accurately conveys my cluelessness at such practical ventures as troubleshooting household stuff, so in these situations I have to rely on professional assistance, even if it is long delayed.
Ms. Annie hasn’t shown up this morning. She wasn’t around for the early feeding and still wasn’t here to greet us after the morning walk. So after my coffee, I’ll have put put on my shoes and head down to walk the four acres of state land just below us. Hopefully she’s just on an extended hunt and will show up on her own, but I always go looking “just in case” when one or another of the cats decides to change their schedule without notice.
Here’s a final bit of sharing on this Kuhio Day morning.
It’s a photo of my mother’s parents, Heleualani and Duke Yonge, taken just after WWII. My sister must have dug it out, and I grabbed a quick snapshot of it when I spotted it laying around my parents’ living room this week. It looks like quite a feast they were enjoying! Just click for a larger version of the photo.
Pretty good for a photo of a photo! Isn’t technology wonderful?