What a crock!

Ah, Monday morning, full of hope and promise for the new week! I was up early enough to actually make a pot of coffee and an egg sandwich for breakfast, then off to work I go. Oh, oh! The remote garage door opener in my car isn't working. So, I got out, closed the garage door and ran like hell to get out before it hits me (okay, okay, ran like hell as much as this old boy can run like hell...)

At lunch, I stopped in a Walgreens and picked up a new battery for the remote opener.

I didn't mention it yesterday, but I did do more laundry on Sunday and the floor drain did overflow again. So, after lunch, I called up the sewer cleaners my ex-landlady always had me use and they said they were booked for the next week, but could be there, today, at 2:00 PM. I made my apologies to my boss and raced home.

I beat them by five minutes. They remembered the house, although it's been 3 years or so since they were here. I got out an extension cord for them, they opened the outside access pipe and got to work.

Here's the problem. Somewhere in the history of the house, somebody added a 4-inch plastic pipe to provide outside access to the system. However, the line from the house to the road is 6-inch crock. So, they used to only be able to clean the line out with a 4-inch cutter, which doesn't really clean out the whole line.

However, the guy showed me a new style cutter they now have that expands from a 4-inch to a 6-inch. But, if any of the original clay crocks have moved out of line, hitting the edge of one would trash the entire system. So, before they use it, they run a camera down the line.

Old-style option with 4-inch cutter - $170.00
New Option with expanding 6-inch cutter and camera - $550.00

Since this was not a planned expense, I went with Option 1. I had to have all the water faucets turned on while they worked, so I just sat in the house and listened to my next water bill rise in price. They were done and gone and I was coiling up the extension cord at 3:45 PM. I decided going back to work would be a little silly.

I swept the downstairs floor and washed it (it only overflowed with dirty laundry water so it wasn't too bad).

I had saved the au jus from Saturday's roast, so I put olive oil and butter in a cast iron pan, then saut�ed a medium sized onion that I diced. Next I added sliced cremini mushrooms (later on, I determined it would have been better to chop the mushrooms) and when everything was ready, I added the au jus to warm up. I thickened it with cornstarch and cold water, tasted it and added some fresh ground pepper.

I put two pieces of bread on a plate, topped it with shredded roast beef and topped that with my gravy. So, I had an open faced hot beef sandwich for dinner. And, the mushrooms? Taste was excellent, but it just looked silly to have those big slices of mushroom in the gravy.

I watched some TV (the last Next Iron Chef America for the second time) and then read until bedtime.