What is That Smell?

When Ephant and I got out of the van Tuesday evening, after yoga, I noticed this terrible smell, sort of like burnt plastic.  My first thought was the brakes are burning.  I hadn't been driving with the emergency brake on, so I was a little perplexed.  I decided I'd take the van in in the morning just to check it out.  However, I had second thoughts the next day and decided to wait and see if the smell reappeared.  Eventually I decided the smell was coming from the garage, not the car.  The only problem was I still couldn't figure out what exactly was causing it.  Nothing appeared to have spilled.  My answer came when I ran out of hot water that afternoon.  I went to look at the water heater and noticed the top thermostat was a little distorted.  When I took off the Styrofoam covering the rest of it, it was pretty apparent there had been an electrical fire around the top of the thermostat.  J replaced the thermostats a month or two ago, who knows what happened.  I set up an appt with Sears to come fix it on Friday, that meant two days without hot water.  Thursday I decided I couldn't live without a shower so I gave the cold water a whirl.  Fefe usually hangs out in the bathroom, but as soon as I started shrieking, she decided it was too hostile of an environment.  The worst thing was it took longer simply because the soap comes off slower in cold water.  The next day I went running in the morning, but refused to shower till the technician fixed the heater.  The hot shower that day was one of the most blessedly joyful experiences of my life.  Every time I use hot water, the gratitude just flows through me.

By the way, I'm up to 6 miles on my runs now.  Except for the waking early aspect, I'm really enjoying it.  It is amazing how much more fit I feel than when I was running just 3 miles.  I bought some new  running shoes to fit with my orthotics, but my foot still sits a little higher in the shoe than I'm comfortable with.  So I need to figure that out.

Friday night we had bingo at the kid's school.  I had to play cashier so I set the kids up with their bingo cards.  After the first game I went to check on them and they decided they wanted to come back and sit with me.  I thought it was because they wanted help, but it turned out Brother B had successfully won the first game without me even noticing.  They just love their momma and wanted to be with me :)  Sadly, we had forgotten it was Good Friday that day so the turnout was pretty bad. I imagine with how many Hispanics go to that school that quite a few of them are Catholic.

My big accomplishment yesterday was pulling out the washer and dryer so I could seal off the hole the mice are coming through.  It was a nice secondary reason to clean under them as well.  Turns out there was a pretty big gap where the dryer vent goes down into the crawlspace.  J wasn't too happy with my solution of duct tape.  He informed me that The Red Green show is just a show.  Hopefully the mice won't chew through the duct tape.

Since we looked pretty decent for church today I set up all my equipment really fast before church to get a quick family picture.  It is not the best picture ever, but it'll do until we have time to do another.  I ended up compositing three of them together.  Yay for photoshop!