Yesterday began better than expected. We didn't have as much snowfall as predicted, but there was enough to run the snowblower to open up our trails again. I was just finishing when I noticed Jon on the front porch with a 5 gallon bucket of water that he proceeded to dump over the railing onto the snow in the yard. He signaled to cut off my engine to the snowblower and I knew that a, "Houston, we have a problem", was in progress.
The problem: Our 30 gallon fish tank was leaking and had already leaked about 5 gallons of water onto the floor. I grabbed another bucker and we both started dipping water out of the tank as fast as we could. We removed all of the plants and rocks and all of gravel in the bottom so the tank was light enough to move outside to the front porch.
We had used our hutch for the base of the fish tank as we found out the anything you buy in the store for a fish tank base is really not stable or sturdy enough when the tank is on carpet.
After we had finished taking everything apart and sorting out what was wet, we also discovered that the water on the floor had leaked across the floor/ceiling of the basement approximately 14 feet to just above the door into the woodroom. There was a electrical junction box directly above the door and water was dripping into the box onto the concrete floor in the woodroom. We grabbed our bag of old towels (since this is not the first time we've dealt with water in the basement where we don't really want water) and started sopping it up.
I believe that this is the end of our fish tank days, especially since Covid-19 began the fish supply has dwindled down to nothing. We've bought a few but for the most part they all die. Possibly too much stress during shipping which is taking too long.
It took a couple of hours to cleanup and sort out what was wet and/or what could be salvaged. I used my carpet shampooer to suck up the water in the carpet and it's drying.
We inherited the hutch from Jon's parents many years ago. The top half of the hutch is removeable and in 2015, when we fist setup our tank, I refinished another cabinet and placed the hutch top on it. Today I will move the top part of my hutch back to it's original place.
Willie report: He saw his first deer in the yard. We thought he would be afraid of them, but he wasn't and took off after them. He didn't respond to our recall, so we have more training to do. He has to learn to chase the deer out of the yard/pasture and then return to the house.
A plus is that he seems to have learned about the snowblower and did not try to herd it at all yesterday.
Our snowfall overnight was about three inches and it's snowing as I am writing this so it looks like I will be running the machine again today. There's a good 15 inches on the deck rail which means there's at least 18 inches out there on the lawn. It's beginning to get deep and Willie is up to his neck in the deep snow.
I think I might be tipping over the edge here, but the snow in these tree branches look like dogs to me. The top one, Snoopy, and the bottom one, a mopsy/floppsy dog. I might have "puppy on the brain" syndrome.
My original plan for yesterday was snow removal and then to bake some cookies. Maybe it will happen today, but there sure is a lot of snow on our deck. It might be time to get it off of there. That is a big project, even for two people.
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