Oh, the joys of owning a home...

Yes, that is how I spent my morning: unplugging our sewer line. A project which actually started at midnight, and then resumed at six-thirty after a short night's sleep.

Oh, joy.

You never really know how essential a sewer line is to civilized life until you try to cope without one.

But as I pointed out to the wife, this is the first plug in twelve years. Can't complain about that when we were clearing the line two or three times a year before we replaced it.

And we need to be grateful to the fellow who installed it, who strongly suggested we add an outdoor clean-out plug. Whole heck of a lot easier than hauling that dirty, heavy thing across the living room and down the stairs, moving the washer, and then having the cable spray raw sewage across the basement floor and walls.

And it was a perfect day. Windy, yes, but a chinook from the southwest that almost got us up to freezing. I was out there in a shirt and vest, and quite comfortable.

And we were lucky the town maintenance guys didn't have any new snowfall or drifted roads to deal with. Whatever I needed was in our driveway in less than ten minutes.

All in all, if you're going to root out your sewer line, this was the nicest day in two months to get it done.