Free Gasoline...

Welcome to this month's edition of Storytelling Sunday.  It begins with this picture, which is actually the end of the story:

Now, let's get to the story...

One day, not too long ago (as evidenced by the date on the receipt), The Hubs and I had friends over on a Sunday afternoon.  This particular Sunday was also "National Ice Cream Day".  Now, I'm not one to ignore ice cream, especially a national holiday celebrating such a delectable treat.  So before we got too involved in our social time, one of our friends and I went out to get some sweet treats.

As we reentered the house, I heard a weird noise coming from the basement.  It sounded like my washing machine on spin cycle but Very Loud.  Did The Hubs start a load of laundry while I was gone?  I leaned forward, bracing myself on the stairwell railings, to listen more closely.  That's when I noticed the water coming out of the laundry room area into our family room.

I tore down the stairs, yelling for The Hubs to come.  Entering the laundry room, I am immediately in water up to my ankles.  Turning on the lights I see that the hot water heater has water pouring out of the bottom of it.  Stunned, I just point to it as The Hubs comes flying in.  He turns off the water main and we just stare at each other, dumbfounded. 

Another of our friends came downstairs to see what the issue was.  He showed us that there was a bypass water turn-off on the hot water heater, so we could still have cold water in the house.  I spent the next 30 minutes sweeping water toward out sump pump.  I must say, our basement must be graded well, for although there was a lot of water in the laundry room, very little got into our family room.  For that I am very thankful.

Well, we continued our afternoon social time with our friends, just with cold water and a lot of stress spinning in my head.  I mean, it's not as if I was saving up for a new hot water heater or anything. 

After our friends left, I went online to do some research.  Found the best buy at Lowes and so The Hubs and I decided to head over there the next day.  Besides, the Lowes website said "same day installation"!

(I'll skip over the part the next morning where The Hubs braved a cold shower.)

The next morning we headed to Lowes.  After discovering we couldn't purchase the one we had found online, we chose another, less expensive model.  This proved beneficial because of all the other things, including a permit to perform the work, we had to purchase to get the job done.  As The Hubs was finishing up the selection and details, I left the store and headed back to our local Giant Eagle to purchase Lowes gift cards.

"Why?" you ask.  "Why leave the store to buy gift cards only to come back and pay for the items with them?  Why not just pay for them?"  Ah... because if I'm going to buy a new water heater, I might as well get as many perks as possible. And for every $50 spent at our Giant Eagle, you earn 20-cents off your gas.  This is so very worth the 2 miles I had to drive to get the gift cards, and return to the store.

After paying for the hot water heater and all that came with it, we left the store to await the installer.  After only 3 hours, he arrived and it took him less than an hour to install our brand new hot water heater.  Aaaaah... hot water again.  Such a taken-for-granted luxury!

And a few days later?  I stopped at the gas station and got free gas!

Moral of the story?  If you're forced to buy a new hot water heater when you least had planned to do so, then drive the extra couple of miles to get gift cards so that you can at least get a tank (or more) of free gas. It's such a small thing.  But worth it.

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