I talked to several people at MetLife today to see if my homeowner’s policy would cover replacing the sewer line, and nobody there seems to know the answer. Traci called our local agent first, and they said that they didn’t know the answer and that we would have to submit a claim in order to find out. I called this morning to do just that, and the woman I talked to told me that they would pay for digging the hole and filling it back in, but that I would have to pay for actually removing the old pipe and laying new pipe (heh, laying pipe). I asked for that in writing, and she said that it’s not really written anywhere. I explained to her that I absolutely would not proceed unless I had something in writing specifying what they will and won’t cover, so she said to go ahead and make a claim and they would send me something. Later, another woman (a claims adjuster) called me to get some clarification on exactly what the problem was with the sewer line. She told me that generally, they wouldn’t cover problems that occur off my property, but since I have it in writing from the Price City Public Utilities Supervisor that all house mains and lateral lines are not the responsibility of the city, she said she would talk to somebody else to see if there’s any way that they’d cover this. I’m 100% certain that I’ll hear back from her soon, telling me that they won’t cover any of it, which will basically make the decision for me: we’ll move out–the bank can have the house back.
Since yesterday, we’ve been pretty sure that circumstances will lead to us moving out, so I went and dug my truck out of mothballs in order to get a head start on the process. I let the registration expire in October and dropped the insurance since the truck wasn’t much good to me–it’s not 4WD, and my whole family won’t fit inside it (not safely, anyway). The only access to my back yard, where I had the truck parked, is through my mom’s back yard. There was still a lot of snow back there, and it took me well over an hour to get my truck out onto the street. I tried for most of that time to back it out, only because with the way it was parked in my yard, that was the only way to exit without doing a several-point u-turn, which in the snow would have been impossible. After getting almost to the pavement, I got to a point where my tires just wouldn’t grip anything, and the rear-end started sliding sideways into the bushes that line my mom’s driveway. After trying that for way too long, I got fed up with trying it in reverse, threw it into second gear and barrelled forward. I managed to turn 90 degrees in a skid at the wide spot at the end of her driveway, then I dug out the snow directly behind me with a snow shovel, backed up, then barrelled all the way out of her driveway going forward, no problems this time. If only I’d tried that from the beginning.
Today, things have at least been moving much more smoothly. On my lunch break, I drove the truck down to get gas (expecting to get pulled over for expired registration, just ’cause that’s how my luck has been going), then I went to Grako’s to get a safety inspection. Normally, it takes them an hour or longer to get it done, but I was in and out of there in 15 minutes. Not only that, but the heap of shit actually passed! Afterwards, I went to the DMV to register the truck, and again I expected a long wait, but I was the only one there and it only took three minutes. I was so tempted to make some smart-ass remark about whether or not they’d accept a personal check with such obscenities printed on it, but I figured it’s not that lady’s fault that the DMV’s administrators are assholes.
I actually made this new layout for a different section of the site, but I liked it so much that I decided to use it on the main page. All I really had to change was the image on top and the colors, but I think it looks better than the old one–I never really liked that one too much (too dark a background). I looked at this layout on two other computers today, and it looked too green. It looks more gray than green on my LCD monitor, so I may end up re-doing the image and background colors on another computer.