It's a chicken little couple of weeks.

It's not exactly that the sky is falling, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did the way things have been going the past couple of weeks. Part of the  strangeness we've been dealing with is what seems like all the mechanical things failing or dying in our house. First it was the leak in the pool heater, then two of my three stand alone hard drives dying the same day, then the air conditioning going out (the repair man is here right now in the hot attic replacing a coil). Then the leak in what we thought was the one year old water filter/alkalizing system turned out to be the garbaretor and that was replaced two days ago. Then  two nights ago when we went to watch a dvd, our two year old Samsung dvd/vcr player wasn't working and after a phone consultation with the repair man he said that it  looks like, his words, that the  player has gone south. But Jim being ever optimistic wants him to come and look at it just in case, so we're expecting him today or tomorrow for confirmation. And of course, let's not forget the occurrence that started this non stop sequence of failures - the baso valve dying in the middle of my soda firing week before last. And of course, my own body seeming to go south with a bad gash and intestinal virus which thank goodness, seem to have slowly decided to not live her anymore, plus a return of the problem I had with reflux which the surgery had cured and is now back; but since I still have the medication on hand, I'll wait a while before getting that looked at again.

The replacement baso valve and new thermocouple arrived yesterday. And the day before, the plumber, after installing the garburetor, made time to remove the kiln burners for me. He also found that the pilot burner was not sitting in there properly, so that may have been why I was getting all that back burning from that burner.

I wrote Olympic and got the information on the right orifice sizes for the main burners and pilot burner and they seem to be fine, so now I just have to get the whole thing cleaned up and put back together.

The handyman should be coming over the weekend, to do some power washing and staining on our fence, which the homeowners association has just informed us needs doing, but first, I'll have him help me lift that kiln off the stand so I can wire brush the pilot bar, clean out the holes, get the pilot burner back on and the new baso valve installed. Since we're still looking at a week of 90 degree daytime highs, I'm not in a rush to fire an uncovered, kiln on the south side of the house. In the meantime there's plenty of garden and kitchen chores to deal with until then, and keeping my fingers crossed and hope that the universe doesn't have any more fix it or replace it projects in our near future. We've had enough of this kind of excitement and check writing for a while!

For now, I need to get my hand watering done and be ready for write a check for the air conditioning repair man.