My natural gas is going to be turned off most of the day as a new gas line is bored from the other side of the road, under my lawn, and to the side of my house.  My gas meter will be moved from the basement to outside.

The worst part for me is waking up early to let them in.

Natural gas is pretty low on the service interruptions scale.  It’s even more minor when it’s planned.

When the electricity goes out, it’s sudden and you know it.  The outage could be a minute or a day.  Even a short outage require computers to be restarted and any work could be lost.  Avoid opening the frig or freezer, but it’s mostly just boring.  If it goes over a day, there could be a problem.

My internet used to drop out pretty often.  Back in the day, it was because my service provider cut off my internet for downloading movies.  Then I’d have to call them and act like I didn’t know how WiFi worked.   A VPN solved that problem. 

More recently, it would drop out for a few minutes, once or twice per week.  I learned to log in to my cable modem to view the event log to establish that it was their problem.  Cox has upgraded their equipment, so that’s gone away.  If I browsed on my phone, this wouldn’t be much of a problem.

Water never goes out, but if it did, I could adapt.  Planet Fitness is 5 minutes away.  There is a crate of water in the camper and a couple of water cans.  If necessary, I could fill the camper water tank for hot showers.  Sparky is eager to show me where to shit in the woods.

Natural gas is less consequential than water.  The wood stove keeps me warm.  I could cook on that, cook on the grill or in the camper.  There is a backup electric hot plate in the camper.  Hot showers at Planet Fitness or in the camper. 

I wouldn’t mind my cell phone service going out.  I might like it.  Friends and family could be informed via email.  If it was out because my phone went tits-up, getting a new phone set up would be irritating.

Trash pick up counts as a service.  That could plausibly be interrupted by a city labor dispute.  At best, I remember to put my trash out, once or twice per month.  I probably wouldn’t notice.  Dropping my trash off at the city dumpster would be great. 

On the plus side, I don’t have to work out today. 

This photo is from one of the security cameras.

Before boring my natural gas line, they had to excavate to locate an 18 inch high pressure natural gas transmission line.  I like that this guy has to stay near that red fire extinguisher in case something exciting happens.  

Seriously dude.  If that transmission line is breached, that little fire extinguisher isn’t going to turn the tide.

Here’s the boring machine.  Those yellow hydraulic cylinders on the right extend to tip the left side toward the ground.  Drill sections are added to extend the reach as it bores.

It turns out that this camera can capture all the action, but I am tempted to re-aim the camera to center the shot.  I’d have to go up on the roof or climb out a window, and that seems intrusive.