Witchin' water

As I mentioned in my last post, we're having some problems with the well.  Again.  We replaced the bladder tank for the well pump in January, and we replaced the pump in March.  Only fitting that in June we should have to replace another piece of it, yes?

Friday afternoon, around 4:00, I noticed that we had no water.  So I checked the pump.  Pressure = 0 psi.



That's a bad sign.

I learned last weekend how to prime the pump, so I tried that.  No luck.  Why would it be so easy?  So I unplugged the pump to let it cool off and rest for a while and tried to prime it again.  Still, no luck.  The pump is fine, the lines in the house are fine, there's no leaks anywhere inside or outside that we can find.

We deduce that the problem must be in the well.

Now we have a bigger problem.  Where is the well?

Most of the time, wells have some type of PVC cap that extends about a foot above ground.  All the important lines are buried underground.  Not so for us.  Here, on top of our hill, everything is underground.  There is no above-ground well cap.  There are no markers.  We've talked to people who used to live here before, and all they can tell us is, "It's out behind the kitchen somewhere."

That is remarkably unhelpful.

We spent Friday night borrowing a 1000-gallon water tank, rinsing the fertilizer residue out, and filling it up so at least the cows would have water.  (Gee, this feels familiar...  almost like we've done this before...)  They are watered.  They are happy.  Yay cows.

So on Saturday afternoon, after the Princeton Veterinary Hospital open house, we started trying to find the well.  Apparently, some people have the ability to "witch" water.  You start with two large wires, bent at 90 degree angles, and hold them loosely in your hands so the long ends of the wires are pointing away from you.  Please allow my husband to demonstrate.



Then, you slowly walk forward, perpendicular to where you think the water should be.  As you walk closer to the water (if you have the talent), the wires will start to twist on their own power, until the long ends are crossed in front of you, like so.



John has the witching ability.  I tried it too.  Apparently, I can also witch.  (That may be no surprise to many of you.)

Based on the witching, we thought the well should be here.



We made the scuff mark in the grass ourselves.  Nothing so simple as "splotch marks the spot" here!  This is in the backyard, about 50 feet away from the house, in a straight line from where the pipes enter the basement.  So we dug.



Then John changed into more suitable clothes and dug some more.



Then we got out the probe to see if we could find something hard under all this dirt.



But the ground was too hard to use the probe, so we dug some more.



Then the hole got really deep, and John had to sit down to keep on digging.  After all, this is where the witching said the well should be!



And after all this, what did we find at the bottom of our 3-1/2 foot deep hole?  No well.  So much for witching.  We did find a section of corrugated pipe coming from we're not sure going to we don't know.  It is not the kind of thing that would be attached to a well, so we ignored it.  And it is not going in the direction that we witched water, either.

We left this hole in the ground as a reminder of where the well is not, and we gave up for the night.  We ordered pizza (can't expect me to cook if there's no water, can you?) and went to bed.

We tried again on Sunday.  But that's a story for another day.

Part 1:  The well, teaser
Part 2:  Finding the well, witching water
Part 3:  Finding the well, for real this time
Part 4:  Down in the well...  90 feet down, to be exact
Part 5:  Whee!  Water again!  Success!

Tuesday teaser

At 4:00 pm on Friday, the pressure gauge on our well pump looked like this:



(That dial should be sitting around 60, not at 0.)

At 4:15 pm on Sunday, our backyard looked like this:



At 8:45 pm on Sunday, Sexy Sam looked like this:



And at 2:15 pm on Monday, our well pump pressure gauge still looks like this:



You want to know the whole story, don't you?  You're just dying to hear how it ends, aren't you?

So am I!  Stay tuned!

Part 1:  The well, teaser
Part 2:  Finding the well, witching water
Part 3:  Finding the well, for real this time
Part 4:  Down in the well...  90 feet down, to be exact
Part 5:  Whee!  Water again!  Success!

Miller Mondays: What do I want to be when I grow up?

Welcome back for Section 2 of 48 Days to the Work You Love!

The three main points from this section are:

1.  The focus of this program is to learn how to plan your work around the life you want.

2.  You must strive for balance in your life.  Extreme success in one area often is at the detriment to another area of your life.  You want to build toward success in seven areas of your life (I'll tell you what they all are in a bit).

3.  Goals are essential - written correctly they are not restrictions, rather they are road maps and guides so we can achieve freedom and accomplishment.

Dan begins this section by discussing the difference between vocation, career, and job.  A vocation incorporates calling, purpose, mission, and destiny.  I am used to hearing this word in relation to ministry, but Dan takes it out of that context.  Everyone has a vocation - it is up to you to learn a bit more about yourself, listen, and figure out what that is.

A career is a line of work, and it may (or may not) contribute to fulfilling your calling.  Many different careers can support the same vocation.  For example, the vocation to "help reduce pain and suffering in the world" may be fulfilled by many different careers:  doctor, nurse, counselor, pastor, teacher, scientist, politician, writer, and the list can go on from here.  Which career you choose should depend on your unique skills and abilities, personal tendencies, and values, dreams and passions.

Finally, a job consists of the daily activities you perform in order to produce income.  This may be part of your vocation, or it may be simply something to pull in a paycheck.  Obviously, the goal here is to get your job to be yourcareer which furthers your vocation in life.

Most people are used to looking at life within this framework



where work is the center of our lives, and the rest fits in around it, when and where there is space.  (Replace "church" with "spiritual growth," or whatever word/phrase best suits your beliefs.)  Dan challenges us to a paradigm shift, where we look at life like this:



Now work has an equal emphasis as the other aspects of our lives.  This is balance, when all aspects of your life get (approximately) equal attention, and none is significantly overpowering the others.

Granted, not every day is going to have equal effort into each of these areas.  Got a big deadline coming up?  Chances are "work" is going to get a lot bigger for a couple of weeks, while perhaps "recreation" and "family" shrink a bit.  The trick is, this should only be temporary.  Once that deadline is past, make an effort to invest some time and energy into those areas that slipped a little during the mad dash to the finish.  You won't be balanced every day, probably not every week, maybe not even every month.  What you're really going for is an overall sense of balance in your life.

Finally, goal setting.  Dan tells us that only about 8% of the population has clear goals.  Only about 3% of the population actually write their goals down.  Supposedly, the 3% of the population with written goals accomplish more than all of the other 97%, although I'm not sure how you can assess this.  We are setting goals in seven main areas of life:  Financial, Physical, Personal Development, Family, Spiritual, Social, Career.  It is no accident that Career is listed last.  Remember what we are learning how to do?  Find the LIFE you want, and plan your work around that.

Dan encourages you to start with five-year goals, work back from there to one-year goals, and finally to something you can do today to kick-start your progress.  Where do you want to be in five years?  What salary do you want to make?  What car do you want to drive?  Where do you want to live?  What kind of house do you want?  How big is your family?  What is your involvement in church and other community organizations?  How often do you exercise, and what do you do?  What books have you read?  Who are you mentoring?

To borrow from another of my favorite authors, Dave Ramsey also has some ideas on goal setting.  Goals need to be specific ("I want to lose 20 pounds," not "I want to lose some weight"), measurable, yours ("I want to be a lawyer," not "my parents want me to go to law school"), time-sensitive (give yourself a deadline), and written.

Keeping these guidelines in mind, set yourself some goals in the seven main areas of life!  Remember, these are not set in stone.  They can, and should, change and evolve as you do.  You should revisit your goals at least once a year (preferably more often) to check in, see how you are doing, and re-evaluate what your goals are and where you are heading.

Feel overwhelmed?  Think of it this way, "A goal is a dream with a timeframe on it."

Happy goal setting!  Come back next week for Section 3:  Planning my work around the life I want!

Open house!

This week is off to a hectic start, and it's only getting crazier.  My husband and father-in-law own a veterinary practice in our town (the Princeton Veterinary Hospital), and we've been working on some serious renovation on the building since last fall.  The building is more than twice the size, and now it has an upstairs.  It is gorgeous, way functional, and everyone has been really excited to be working in it, and the clients just love it!

Finally, the renovation is done!!  We're having a ribbon cutting on Friday at 11:00 am central time (sponsored by the Gibson County Chamber of Commerce).  We're also Open House for the clients and anyone else who wants to come by and see the new building!  The Open House is Saturday from 1:00-3:00 pm central time.

Tell your friends, and stop by if you're anywhere near southwest Indiana!

Memorial Day Marathons

It seems to be a pretty big trend - so many channels are doing all-day marathons of TV shows on holidays and holiday weekends.  Memorial Day was a tough choice - Hoarders was on A&E all day long, and NCIS was on USA all day.  Which to watch?  Oh, the choices!

It would have been so easy just to park in front of the television all day...  too bad I had other things to do!  (Oh, and this is one of the things I am trying to stop doing as one of my positive goals.  Right.  Let's put some of this into practice, shall we?)

I did end up watching Hoarders for a little while.  This show fascinates me!  (TLC has one also, Hoarders: Buried Alive, but that one wasn't on all day long.)

Part of why I watch these shows is that I see slight hoarding tendencies in myself, and in some people I know.  I usually think that I don't really have a problem.  And then I remember all the stuff that came out of the basement and is now in our garage...  To be fair, about half of that stuff is my husband's, it's not all mine.  And we will be getting rid of a lot of that stuff instead of bringing it back into the house.

I am also intrigued by how these shows "fix" people.

I can't imagine that a crew can go into a house for two days, do a massive sort/clean/organize, throw a whole bunch of stuff out, leave, and expect the people to be just fine.  I think the shows offer some financial support for the people to get follow-up therapy, but when the disease has been going on for years, I would expect that a two-day purge would be more traumatic than helpful.  You can get a good idea during the episode who is going to come out the other side, and who is going right back to the way they started.

They had a Season 1 follow-up episode on Monday evening, where they revisited people one year later.  I didn't get to watch most of the episode, but I got it on DVR, so I'll be watching it on Tuesday.  I am really interested to see who was able to overcome the hoarding tendency, and who fell back to their old ways.  At the end of the day, if they really don't see a problem with their behaviors, and don't want to change, they are not going to.