Richard, just shut it off at the meter. The valve is on the city side before the meter. If it leaks, it is the city water and they get to fix it. So shut it off at the water meter and drain the water from the house by opening a few sinks. If you don't have a water meter shut off you can borrow mine.

I've actually got two "Church Keys." At least that's what I learned they were called growing up.

Problem is pull the meter cover and all you see is dirt. It's a whole nuther project just to get to the meter gauge let alone farther down to the shut-off. Besides would really like that inside shut-off fixed so it doesn't get bumped and flood the house one day.

Come to think of it, saw the guy checking the meters in the neighborhood last week. Need to check and see if he actually dug down to and read my meter.

At my old house I tried to shut off the valve and it was stuck in place. I could not get it to budge. I asked a buddy what I should do and he said that if bigfoot happens comes through your neighborhood, the glass cover on the front off the meter might just happen to break. If that happens the meter stops working so they have to come replace it, and it is their meter and they will have to clean the mud out to be able to shut off the water to replace the meter. After that is is easy to see the valve and it will shut off properly. The next day I saw bigfoot in my neighborhood and sure enough that bastage broke the glass cover on the meter and with a month or so I had a new meter. Bigfoot just hates water meters.

I always thought the can opener for beer bottles or the old style beer cans before pull tabs was a church key.

there are many keys. My father says the old can opener is one to.

Understood it as the term used for the "T" shaped water meter key (operates the valve) that also included the water lid opener (unlatches and helps to open the lid) on the top end of the "T". Either are also each sold as separate tools.

Just checked and there looks as if there was no attempt to dig down to the gauge to read my water meter. Guess they estimated my meter reading.

Stijn!!
 

Demand a water bill that is accurate. They will have to read it.

Right now in the panhandle there is 6 inches of Rick's favorite white crap and still falling. It is 66 degrees here and in the 80 in south Oklahoma.

Yeah, my water bill has been almost exactly the same for about 6 months. My luck right now probably used more than they exstimated.

Happy Hump day all.

Yins aren't getting the tennis ball sized hail like the SE are ya?

No lumpy chunks of water falling around here.

All the bad pookie weather was south of us. Mostly in Texas, LA, MS, AL and GA.

Good morning.

Enjoying the unexpected vacation. Not going to like the next paycheck though.

morning all. Not up to par today might not make it till noon. Didn't sleep well and I am paying for it now.

You really should not be out drinking and dancing the night away anymore. :p

you sir are correct! I think I have reached my limit of drugs and will be quitting them asap.

TV stuff...

Got 3 months of DirectTVNow for upgrading my AppleTV from 3 to 4. The 4 has voice control and can run games and apps on it. Have evaluated DirectTVNow and is not nearly as good as Cox Cable.

Called Cox Cable. Took over 25 minutes to get customer retention. I have a Cox Business account for my internet and residential for TV. All they could find was my business account. Anyway customer retention guy was able to get $40 knocked of my bill for the same channels and upgraded my cable box to the voice controlled one.

Turned out the retention guy lives in my neighborhood. Told me if something was coming on one of the premiums like HBO to have them turn it on for the weekend, then cancel it and would only get charged like $2.

We have DirecTV for home and Comcast for internet. In the rare times the power goes out for extended periods we have no internet but we have tv once the generator is turned on. I once had the Comcast guys call during an outage attempting to get me to sign up. I laughed at him.

One thing I don't understand about large companies like Cox or AT&T is their real love of screwing the long term good customers. I have been with Cox since the 1980s. Every-time I call they thank me for being a long time customer. I can call the customer service folks and discuss costs and they can't do anything. I tell them to shut down the account and they transfer me to customer retention. Then, magically the can work with prices. I am on automatic payment so the payment is never late, been a customer longer than most of their employees have been alive, and I only call when there is a problem. You would think they would give me the loyal customer low rates. For whatever reason they make me have to call them every so often to get the good rates. AT&T is the same way. The other utilities are all the monopolies and great, but the State Corporation Commission has a big stick to keep them in line.

they do that because most people just blindly pay the costs and don't look at what the new sign ups are paying.

The guy told me to mark my calendar for this time next year to call and ask for customer retention and tell them my deal is about to run out. They will make sure I am not paying full price. Said any deal they setup automatically resets to full price after a year.

Being optimistic about getting 928 back.
Turned alarm system back on and added a contact on the garage overhead door this morning.