Suspension of Disbelief

The term suspension of disbelief or willing suspension of disbelief has been defined as a willingness to suspend one's critical faculties and believe the unbelievable and sacrifice realism and logic for the sake of enjoyment. 

Most days I'm willing to do this while watching films. Absolutely essential if you want to enjoy the movie. I'm willing to believe that there was a battle between good and evil that lasted for generations long, long, ago in a galaxy far, far away. But every now and again, a movie crosses the line. That's what happened with Allied.

There were just too many things that were unbelievable. For instance,London hospitals did not move people outside during air raids. But if they'd stopped with a child being born outside in the middle of an air raid, I might have been able to continue my suspension of disbelief. But they didn't stop there. They wanted me to believe that people in WWII London opened the curtains at night when they put their children to bed. They wanted me to believe that people were having parties in their gardens at night during the Blitz. They wanted me to believe that if they suspected an officer's wife of espionage that they would actually inform that officer and let him in on the "test" they were going to run. And did they think I'd believe that if the spouse was found guilty that the officer would have to execute her himself? Nope. Too much to take in. And then Mark pointed out that the cars of those days had a more complex start up routine than just turning the key. I don't remember the name of the guy in the credits who was in charge or research, but I think he must have been sleeping on the job. I'd have been too embarrassed to allow them to use my name. 

On the positive side, the costumes were fabulous. Especially the outfits worn by the heroine in Casablanca. I'm specific here because once the story line moved to London, the heroine's wardrobe turned a bit frumpy. Not sure why - but it sure was noticeable. 

And on top of all that, the ending wasn't especially happy. Unless you're really into costumes or you just really like to watch Brad Pitt make out with somebody, there's really not a good reason to go see this one. 

$300 Later

When we got home the day after Thanksgiving the weather in Texas was gorgeous. We were having lunch on the patio when we noticed that there was a pool of water by the porch. Mark went to investigate. He made sure no water was turned on inside the house and then he went to look at the meter. The water meter was spinning at a fairly high rate of speed. Having a party. He calculated it to be putting out just under three gallons per minute.

We needed to turn off the water and call a plumber.

Have you ever tried to get a plumber on the Friday after Thanksgiving? After getting no answer and leaving a message with the two plumbers I knew, I decided to check out Angie's list. I looked up the A-rated plumbers that serviced my area and phoned the top four. I left messages for three and made an appointment with the fourth one for the following day.

One of the three I'd left messages for called back on Saturday but I didn't make an appointment because I had a Saturday appointment with the first one who answered. The appointment wasn't until 4 PM, but that was okay. Two of them never called back at all.

In the meantime we were leaving the water shut off. We turned it on from time to time to take showers, flush toilets and clean up the kitchen. A bit of a pain, but by that time we'd cleared the closet under the stairs and the closet in the downstairs bathroom so we could access the crawl space. It was wet. Muddy. A complete mess. But after a day of the water being shut off, a good bit of it had drained off.

At 4 PM on Saturday plumber number 1 showed up. A nice kid. Very personable, but not the master plumber and unable to find the source of the leak. He was all set to charge us zero since he wasn't able to help us but when he called the office to find out what to do next, he was ordered to charge us for a service call. I was sort of okay with that but then I found out what the next step was - it was wait until the following Friday for the boss (the master plumber) to come out with some high-tech and no doubt very expensive equipment to "listen" and pinpoint the location of the leak.

We weren't happy that they were suggesting that we wait almost an entire week. And it bothered me that they were only going to "locate" the problem and no mention was made of when they might get around to fixing it. But by this time it was after 5 PM on a Saturday. It wasn't like I had a lot of choices.

By Sunday, Mark had pinpointed the problem. About 10 feet of original (66 year old) galvanized steel pipe fresh water supply line that he calculated had split. We figured there was no need to pinpoint the location. It would all have to be replaced. I called the plumber who was supposed to come to locate the problem to let him know that it didn't need to be located because it all just needed to be replaced. We wanted to know if the job could be started sooner. Bottom line - he never called back - at least not until Friday morning when he wanted to confirm the appointment and by that time I no longer needed him.

Next step was to ask my Facebook friends if they knew any plumbers. One friend sent me two names. Both called back. One came out that same (Monday) afternoon and the other one told me he had no availability for at least a week. I suspect the one that did come didn't really want to do it because the quote he gave me was quite high. About $3000 more than the company we ended up going with. And of course, he couldn't start on the job for two weeks, but I still owed him a $75 service call. He knew before he came that I had limited access to water. Why did he bother to come at all knowing he couldn't do the job for two weeks?

But by then it was late Monday afternoon, I still had no water (for the most part) and I still needed a plumber. Next step was to login to HomeAdvisor. If you've never used it, you just enter your address and the nature of your "project" and it puts you in touch with three contractors. Two of the three phoned me. I explained the problem and made appointments for the following day. So on Tuesday I got to pay out another $150 in service calls but at least one of the companies was able to start on it the very next day.

They dug the trenches on Wednesday, replaced the pipe on Thursday, and filled in the trenches on Friday. Put it all back together and you can't even tell they were there. Fabulous!

It Was Real

It's been a month since we left Texas to go to Florida. It seems so long ago and almost like it wasn't real. While we were at the inspection conference we never went outside the hotel unless they were serving dinner in the courtyard, which they did two nights. We left the conference with a 32 item to-do list, so even after we got to Fort Pierce, it wasn't all fun and games. In fact, it was almost no fun and games except for my birthday. On my birthday we played golf early in the morning, walked around the town and the pier, and had lunch and dinner overlooking the water.

Even though we spent most of our time working, it was good to have a change of scenery and nice weather - even though Texas weather wasn't particularly bad. But it's that 32-item to-do list that's kept me from posting until now. And no, I haven't completed all 32 items, but I needed a break from them.

We took some photos, so I guess it was real: