GRANDMA!!

Grandma's arrived, and brought very cold weather with her. It's supposed to start snowing at around 2 a.m. or so. And lucky us, we still have plumbing problems.

We have an outside faucet/spigot (a "sillcock," for you technical types) which is completely busted. The valve no longer works, and desperately needs to be replaced. It decided to bust in the ''on full-bore'' position, and the only reason we don't have water pouring out of the side of the house is because we have a hose attached to the thing, and the hose is capped.

So I called a plumber, who then failed to contact me again despite my repeated attempts.

Fine.

I went to Service Magic, who then connected me to some local RotoRooter. It's a long story, but they were two and a half hours later than they said they would be and then gave me a verbal quote of $380 to fix the problem.

I nearly had a heart attack. I wrote Service Magic back and asked if this quote seemed...er...extensive. They're supposed to put the request through again as a handyman sort of job.

Looking it up online it seems straight-forward enough, and I'm certainly not keen on spending nearly $400 for what looks like $20 worth of parts and perhaps two hours of professional labor, maybe six for a total neophyte.