Day 20 - Thursday, April 7

 First thing this morning I went to Home Depot to get someone to help dig down to the sewer line outside Amy's bathroom. About a dozen Black guys came running over wanting to work. I offered one guy, "Jerry",  $50 to work for two hours. I should have checked first how well he spoke English as he was from Haiti and it was a challenge to communicate.

When he started digging we encountered a white irrigation pipe and made a small hole in it, causing water to spray all over. I called the San Diego water dept to come over and shut off the water as it is connected before the house water shutoff.

It became very difficult to dig and Jerry wanted more even though he had only worked for a little more than half an hour. We encountered a 4" steel pipe about 18" down - no idea what it is for. About 2' down we encountered a 4" black plastic pipe which I assume is the sewer line. When we had gotten down far enough and were basically done, I asked Jerry to carry the 50lb bag of concrete in the bag of the car to Amy's "La Casita".

Just after I got Jerry back to Home Depot, Carmen called to say that the water guy had just arrived - figures. Fortunately, he was able to wait until I got back as I wanted to see if he knew what was going on with the pipes but he didn't.

Then another trip back to Home Depot, 3 before noon. Fortunately, I was able to cut off the irrigation pipe near the incoming water, unscrew a threaded fitting and screw on a threaded cap. Hopefully this fixes the problems with abandoned irrigation lines.

It was up to 90 by noon and too hot to do much work in the afternoon. Carmen and I trimmed the Bougainvillea that was hitting Amy's car when she drove in. Carmen made a cement block base for one of the rain barrel stands and I cut the legs on the other stand so it was level on the non-level back concrete slab.

We went to Ponce's Mexican restaurant in Kensington, one of our "must visit" restaurants when we are here. They said there would be a one hour wait so we went to Kensington Brewing across the street to have a beer and wait. 20 minutes later, before we were finished with our drinks, we got the call that our table was ready - this seems to happen every time. Dinner was good but the menu has changed and they no longer have the "Tostada Supremo" so I had to get "Ponce's Special Tostada". Enough left over to lunch today.

 

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