I am not home when this happens because pre-warning people that they're going to actually show up must not be something any of the workers for Columbia Gas are trained to actually do. Last year the workers walked right into my townhouse while I was typing on the computer and my son was watching soccer on television. Yup, no knock, no doorbell, just walk right in like you own the damn place.
Since I am not home this time, my landlord lets the workers in to my house. This is usually okay, except that I am madly packing to move, so right now my house resembles an episode of hoarders. The kitchen is stacked full of boxes, all packed and marked and ready to move. My living room is a general staging area for things like newspapers for wrapping fragile items, and it has a tiny sitting area so I can still watch television if and when I feel like it. The den, however, which has the access to the basement, is half-stacked full of furniture I am taking with me. This is the entire reason that I cleaned out the basement a week ago: so I can use the den as a storage area and not have to worry about going into my basement ever again if I so choose to block the door with a chair or something. Smart me, however, left access to the basement because it is also the path to the only heat register in the entire townhouse. Yes, every zone gets heat blasted to it if I want to heat just one room.
But I digress. Back to today. When I arrive home after work, I open the door and am immediately hit by the aroma of dusty basement cement. Yes, the gas workers have left the originally closed and locked basement door ajar so that any varmint or aroma living below the first floor is now welcome in my living space.
I decide to head downstairs for one more look at my lovely, clean basement and find... sonofabitch. There's a new pile of rock and cement fragments and general dirt from the stone walls. There is also a filthy and discarded putty knife left behind. The doorbell interrupts my inspection, and it is my landlady. No problem with letting the workers in, I tell her. She says they came to do the final inspection of the gas work and to finish plugging up the old gas line.
Say, what?
Yes, you read that correctly. To finish plugging up the old gas line ... 350 days AFTER turning my gas back on after the September maelstrom. Mind you, my home is fifty yards from the town's Ground Zero gas line rupture, and the house next door to me (where I used to live) caught on fire. One would think (if one were to truly think at all) that something as important as the final gas line inspection into people's homes may have taken place ... oh ... BEFORE TURNING THE FREAKING GAS BACK ON IN THE FIRST PLACE.I don't know. I mean, I'm no expert; I just live here.
Anyway, there is now a new lovely yellow spot on the basement wall, a new lovely pile of crap in my basement (that they were told not to bother sweeping up... gee, thanks for that), and gas lines that apparently are okay to use, even though I've been using them for almost a year.
Here's the kicker: My gas stove still has not been inspected.
Yup. Progress, right? I mean, it has only been 350 days. I wouldn't want Columbia Gas to actually make sure their work is safe and up to code. That might be a disaster.
