June 17 - Field trip to the Fire Station

Normally, field trips to the Fire Station are all smiles and plastic fireman hats; eating pancakes and trying out the fire hose. Not today. We took our plans over to see the Fire Chief to find out if, in fact, the Fire Department was going to require us, a homeowner, to install a public fire hydrant at vast expense. Turns out that yes, since we saved 2 trees that our neighbor enjoys looking at we do not have a compliant fire turnaround (driveway) and we will be required to put in a fire hydrant. I'm sorry, but in what world is a home owner required to install a public utility at their own expense. What is happening?!? Have we reached some tipping point in California where this makes sense? It makes me want to use a lot of these *&^$#$*&^ and perhaps pepper in a few of these *^$%^&%^ and, after a couple of G&T's, a whole lot of these &%$%^* (sorry to my more sensitive readers, I had to get that off my chest).

So, we also begged that he not require us to put sprinklers in an old house, destroying lots of 100-year old plaster in the process but he said no. Gotta do sprinklers too. So we are scrambling to bring a sprinkler guy in in time to take advantage of all of the holes that the electricians and plumbers made. There's no point in fixing all the holes, skinning all the plaster and moving in all of our furniture to just take it all apart again in 9 months from now. It's making me weary ...