For the past 2 days Dennis has been helping neighbour Grant with his water line.  Grant has a jet pump in the house with an intake line out into the lake.  The water over the intake line was too shallow.  Even though Francois Lake is huge, the shallow water is not healthy.  You can get pretty sick with Giardia if you are not careful.  Lots of fish and ducks and other aquatic wildlife in the shallows along the lake.  So, Grant came and got some water line pipe from us, which had been laying around behind the woodshed for many years.  Yesterday they hooked up the extra length of pipe to extend the intake into the deep water.  They turned on the pump - no water.  They fiddled with it for many hours until it got too dark.  Dennis came home.  This late afternoon they tackled it again.  Grant had to work on the ferry today (the free ferry that crosses Francois Lake over to the south side) so they didn't get started until late.  They finally unhooked the pipe from the pump to see what was wrong.  Squished and squashed against the pump intake were a whole lot of mice, deader than dead.  They had been living in the pipe that we had laying out the back.  When it was hooked up and the pump started the poor buggers were sucked up against the pump, which couldn't pump mice through the system so the pump quit.  Now Grant has to take the pump apart, clean out all the mice and mice parts, and try to put it together again.  Mary, Grant's wife, says she's never drinking the water that gets pumped through that pump.  She was pretty disgusted and came over here for a shower.  The pump still isn't working so they are now on day 2 with no water.  Lesson learned: always flush out any pipe that is laying around outside.

My neighbours and I put in our Rancho Vignola order today.  It seems my order was equal to the combined order of the other 5 people!  Good grief.

Oh yes, about Telus.  We got our phone working again on Wednesday.  We even got a phonecall and an email from Cleve in Montreal who wants to discuss compensation.  He called again and Dennis talked to him.  Dennis said we should be compensated for the days the phone didn't work.  Cleve said no, he would give us the whole month free!.  Ok, not bad.  While I understand equipment fails every now and then, going the extra mile to compensate customers does a lot for the PR of the company.  I know it isn't going to break Telus to give us a free month of basic phone service, but it is a good gesture all the same. 

Tomorrow I will show you my generator project.  I've only just begun but will post some pictures.
bye for now.