Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!

Ah, that lovable Marvin the Martian.

I sit here awaiting the plumber. This is because the Washington Gas guy just left, having shut off all of our gas to the house. (Thankfully, it's nearly 60 degrees outside today.) Why did he shut it off? It turns out the gas pipe to our stove was close to the water pipe that goes to our kitchen... and apparently the pipes had some sort of chemical reaction being next to one another and the gas pipe lost: it's been corroded through and gas was leaking. The gas guy said we were lucky I called. (Hence, the kaboom line.)

Here's what irks me: we've been smelling gas off and on for, oh, two or three months now. Right up against the back door, i.e. right over the under-the-kitchen crawl space where we discovered that there was a lot of gas yesterday when Angela went to put her birthday bike away. (Yes, I got her a bike. Yippee!) It's not like we waited all this time, however: we've called three times before this and were assured that there was no problem, that the smell must have come from the neighbors or something. This is, however, the first time that someone has actually checked under the kitchen because, well, we told them to.

Three times.

This is not why I hate DC, but definitely why I hate Washington Gas.

(On the plus side, the plumber just got here. Got to go. Sigh.)