Winners, yah baby!!!

I must admit my mystery contest was a little less than spectacular!! That's ok, there was a little bit of a hidden agenda too. My friend Heather challenged us to participate in a pass it forward/random act of kindness thing and I thought this would be a good vehicle to put my plan of action in gear. The good news is despite it being a bit of a ludicrous mystery, five count 'em five, brave souls hazarded a guess. Bravo ladies!! Before I reveal my mystery, let's go to the fun part.

May I have a drum roll please...........rata tata tatata

The first winner is Meredith. Meredith took the plunge and made the first guess. She was the ice breaker and most probably just felt plain sorry for me.Meredith is one of the most kindest, biggest hearted person around. Yay Meredith, you are a winner!!!!!!

The second winner is Nicole!!!!  I liked her idea it was a plant hoist and even better yet, let's develop one for hoisting kids. Every parent's back would thank you Nicole! Nicole is a fabulous gardener as well as being an all around super star mom. Yay Nicole, you are a winner!!!!

The third winner is......Kristie!!! Kristie is a great gardener, knitter, writer and general all around great person. Her blog posts are full of calm peaceful thoughts and her photos are beautiful. I liked her idea that it was a boomerang . I should have used it in that capacity last week. I looked out my kitchen windows and there were a couple of !#?## bambis eating all our beans and lots of our tomatoes! Yay Kristie you are a winner !!!!

The fourth winner is Susan. Susan is a fellow BC'er who is a brave and intrepid gardener on our BC Coast. She has to fend off all kinds of varmints, including some Bobby Bruins to keep her garden safe. Thank you for visiting my blog and suggesting it was a skate hanger.Yay Susan Yay!!!

The fifth winner is ......Tammy. What can I say about Tammy. She is a phenomenal gardener, the absolute funniest person and an accomplished dinosaur diorama artiste! An anal retentive mobster really cracked me up, but maybe there is a glimmer of truth in that one. Yay Tammy Yay !!!!!!

Ok all you winners pm me using my email on my Blogger profile and you can supply me with your particulars and I get get your prizes on the way.

Ok and now for the rest of the story....

On the Sept long weekend I noticed a funny smell in our basement. Of course I am thinking what died in here or what are the neighbours doing now! Didn't see anything amiss but later in the day I wandered into one of the bedrooms downstairs and thought to myself, gee that's funny my feet are wet. Wait a minute the carpet is soaking wet and I can hear a geyser. Yes my friends, we had a burst water pipe in the wall between two bedrooms. Oh crappers!! Down comes gyproc on both rooms as we have to find the source of the leak. There has been some really heavy duty road construction going on above us and our house rattles and shakes a lot. The shaking combined with some poor plumbing design caused some piping to crack.

Of course this happens on a long weekend, as these things always do. We are a pair of DIY guys and we have fixed pipes before. This one we weren't sure about as it was an elbow joint and above the water shut off valve Time to call in a perfessional, but it was going to be Wednesday at the earliest. It was Saturday. So we are campers and we can manage living on small amounts of water but we needed some water. We could always fill up buckets with our neighbours hose...but. I know at this point most sane normal people would be off to a hotel but we are kind of stubborn and cheap that way. I remembered my dad told me that in the Depression water leaks in copper pipes were often fixed using a brass screw. Brass, because it wouldn't rust and a screw, well it screws in. With this in mind Brent looked for a brass screw in his tool and fix it stuff and found an old brass cup hook . He screwed in and then put in some putty to seal the deal. Was it perfect, no. But it worked out really well. It allowed us to turn on the water, run around like maniacs and fill sinks, containers..etc a couple of times a day. It even allowed us to have a daily shower. I think we could have had the water on more but we didn't want to tempt fate. So my friends the mystery object was an old copper elbow joint with a brass screw. The hook was a red herring I apologize for that. My clue was the story of the boy and his special skates. That was a reference to Hans Brinker and his Silver Skates. And what was he known for? Plugging a leaky dike with his finger! Well I know this may all sound a quite goofy to you but you never ever know when this may happen to you and you can save the day and look even more impossibly clever!! 

So that's that. It was a summer of mishaps every long weekend. In July, my eardrum suffered a rupture (hence SO much knitting), August ,our daughters new digs where Brent had to fix lots of blocked plumbing and lastly our burst pipe in Sept.  That's OK, it's onward and upward from here!!

I have lots to chat about , my knitting, plants, a bedroom makeover..yadda yadda yadda. I will save that for another day. Blog posts seem to take me such a long time to do. I envy many of you who can write so well and take so many lovely pictures so easily. I have no problem talking ,writing it is a little harder. Equations are the best!!!!

Keep Smiling 

Chris