Oh it burns! 07 Jul 08 @ 08:57

For those who don't understand dates, this past Friday was the 4th of July. A holiday that celebrates the U.S. gaining it's independence from Britain. If you actually must know, we gained independence on the 2nd but because of paperwork (Declaration of Independence) people celebrate on the date everything was finalized. Go figure.

Anyways, for our fourth, we visited Kendra's uncle, Greg, who was visiting from Arizona. He had rented a cottage on Seneca lake for the week and invited all of Kendra's dad's side down there. We had a good time; met a few more new people including Greg who I hadn't met before. Kendra and Lily left around 6:30/7 ish and I ended up staying to spend some time with the other guys.

We stayed up for a while with some drinks and just talking about a bunch of stuff. It was pretty nice. Next morning we had some breakfast and then headed out on the water. It was a beautiful day. Sun was out, cloud cover was low, and I had made the mistake of not bringing any lotion for myself. 3 and 1/2 hours later we got back to the cottage and Mike (Kendra's dad) and I headed back to East Rochester.

We talked in the car about a bunch of stuff. Gas consumption, alternative fuels, electric lawn-mowers; you know, the usual. Relaxed with Kendra for the rest of the day. Finally watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall and loved it. Jason Segel is awesome, end o' story.

Slept well after sleeping on the couch the night before. Then I woke up. My arms are red, my legs are red, my face is surprisingly not too bad. Let's just say I was in a little bit of pain. Went to the little farmer's market in East Rochester to grab some bread, cherries, and tomatoes and headed back home. Now it was time for me to put on my electrician's cap.

We had an issue before we left Friday where our entire kitchen circuit and washer circuit stopped working. We had thought it was a faulty breaker so I went out and got a circuit tester, tested all the breakers, replaced the one that wasn't giving me and power and...still broken. I traced the lines from the breaker box (which is a complete mess) around the basement. Finally I reverse traced the line from the washing machine to a junction box. This junction box was actually two junction boxes stacked on-top of each other, not really a smart move. I took the cap off of the box and all of the sudden we had power in the kitchen.

I didn't want this to be a temporary thing, so I killed all the power to the house (didn't want to electrocute myself), removed all the wires from the junction box and proceeded to strip and reconnect all the connections in the box. After it was all said and done I am happy to announce a house with all of it's circuits functioning. The electric system in this house needs to be fixed, pronto. My next course of action is getting some electricians in for estimates on upgrading my panel and getting all my outlets grounded and up to code.

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